That's the thought that entered my mind when I prodded myself to do the tiniest brave thing recently. It took this cognitive nudge to dive into a cold lake after a cold rain: Come on, p. You don't get to be brave very often.
There are actually lots of opportunities to be brave. More correctly, then: I don't seem to be able to choose to be brave very often. My lack of courage has always troubled me, and I fear that if push were to come to shove, I would freeze when Life most needed me to take courageous action.
I have curiosity in generous amounts, and I possess a fair share of persistence and can-do. These are good qualities to have. I'm not even sure I would trade those two things, if that were the necessary deal, to gain the quality of courage. But I know my flaws, and they haunt me. You want what you lack, and I have always wanted -- above other lacks such as talent and brilliance -- more courage.
While driving in Hartford years ago, I came upon an accident. Someone had apparently just been hit by a car that was perhaps two or three cars ahead of me. I could only see the pedestrian's legs as he lay motionless on the asphalt, and I could see his friend wailing in despair and helplessness. Other pedestrians were gathering. I turned my car around with the reflexes of a pursued animal, reacting only to the need to get away, get away. I wish I had been one of the people who had it in them to rush to cradle either the wounded or the frightened, but that wish was overridden by my flight reflex.
I can think of other frightening occasions where my courage has blown out altogether in the same way. Like when 4-year-old T'ai fell off a very high top bunk in a cabin in the woods. I wailed like a wounded animal as I ran to him in the darkness, likely frightening him more than the fall had. Or that time my dad had a night terror (truly, an aptly named phenomenon) and, deep asleep, thrashed and screamed as if he were being stabbed with a knife. I lay upstairs, all of 30 years old, heart pounding as I listened to his unconscious terror made manifest. But I was frozen to my mattress on the attic floor, and left my poor mom both to comfort him and to peel herself off the ceiling. I have always felt bad about not having the courage to go downstairs to see if she needed help.
Last night we went to see the documentary about the Chinese dissident Ai Weiwei. It's an amazing story of courage in the face of constant fear. I felt like a fraud as I made a donation to Amnesty International the moment we got home. Though such things matter, I know what I know about myself, and my tiny gesture is a poor disguise for a lack of courage to do so much more.
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Wow, what can I say? Except, except...does it not take COURAGE to submit yourself to a surgeon's knife, to roll up your sleeve to chemotherapy, to face yourself without hair or eyebrows, to have your DNA tested, to bare your soul on this blog??? I know you might expect me to say this but Paula Chu without courage is just not my image of YOU. No, NOT at all!
ReplyDeleteThere are a lot of ways to measure and exhibit courage and the personal supply of it waxes and wanes. I think I can be a pretty brave person, especially in a crisis. At that car accident, I might have pulled over and dived in. But the other night, alone in the house, I couldn't remove the carcus of a dead mouse, laid at my feet by my cat, from the floor of the guest room. I just slammed the door and hoped that it would disappear. The next morning, much to my chagrin, my daughter had to sweep it away with the dustpan and remove it from the house. Oh, well.
Forgive yourself.
OMG- another typo!!!
ReplyDeleteYou and I cannot be EMTs, my same birth date, similarly natured, but a whole lot smarter friend. So many things to be in our world. Some have such large reservoirs of the kind of courage you wish for but instead are (sorrowfully, for you) more wired toward freeze than mobilize. I, too, wish I could be one of those who races to the sights and sounds of horrifying or devastation circumstances or just occurred tragic accident with people in need. I feel tremendous gratitude for those among us who possess that particular ability. I know I do not. But, hey, there's always Oz.....and I don't mean Mehmet :-). Who knows what's at the end of that yellow brick road for us?
ReplyDeleteMarilyn has a great point about your courage. I know you dismiss THAT kind of courage. And I know the kind of courage, the EMT courage, that you are talking about. I don't have it either. :(
ReplyDeletewe are all cowards, each in our own way, or we wouldn't be in a world like this.
ReplyDelete