blather, and the nature of bravery

( errands and other boring stuff )

Now for something completely different...one of the Johari window adjectives is "brave", and somebody thinks I am. I've never considered myself particularly brave, in the "leap into a situation and save the day" sense. For the most part I'm perfectly content to follow somebody else who wants to lead. If you want to go do something to prove it isn't dangerous, you go right ahead. I'll do it once you've proven it's safe. However, every time I think about whether or not I'm brave, I remember something Yano Sensei said to me. He said I was one of the bravest people he knew, because I never worried about sparring with anybody, even people he wouldn't want to spar with. I never thought that was brave; I knew those people, and I trusted them not to hurt me. (The two times I did get hurt sparring were both accidents.) So what came across as bravery was because it never occurred to me to be afraid. It wasn't conscious bravery on my part, it was only an absence of fear (or presence of a degree of willful blindness and/or naïveté). Conscious bravery on my part (according to me) is doing something I know I'm afraid of. It's what happens every time I get to the top of a climbing wall and let go. I'm scared to death of what will happen if I let go and fall, and I have to face up to it and persuade myself to let go every single time.

My form of bravery, I guess, is a variation on "you can do anything as long as you don't know it's impossible."