I am Real

I remember the impact that reading "The Things They Carried" had on me the first time I read it. Tonight I am rereading a single paragraph in the chapter entitled "On the Rainy River." The paragraph deals with the idea of courage and a youthful notion that we are each posessed of a finite amount of courage. Essentially O'Brien discusses the idea of going through life and justifying cowardice in your daily life under the guise that we are each saving our courage for something really important.

I also have a book which was given to me by a man named Matt Silver who I respect greatly. The book is a simple hardback which contains a single question or statement to think about on each page. One of the pages is a black, or perhaps dark blue, I can't really tell with the awful lighting in my room. Regardless the question on the page reads: "Will you ever really know how brave you truly are?"

What I want to talk about isn't so much courage or bravery directly, but rather a sense of knowing how anything you truly are. I know that I myself have always had an internal idea of who I am, but I have never been really sure, when the shit hits the fan and all my chips are laid down, would I be who I think I am, or something different, something most likely far worse.

We all have dreams, I remember when I was young hearing about school shootings and thinking how I would stand up to another kid with a gun, I rationalized it by saying that a kid with a gun would lack a lot of confidence and be taken by surprise easily, I envisioned myself as a hero. I always had the suspicion that my headmaster in England was possessed of a curious prescience, one piece of evidence to this came when he talked to my classmates and I about the school shootings. He didn't talk to us in any kind of Headmaster way, instead talking as a person and he asked us rhetorically how we would react if a classmate brought in a gun. He then added that a great many people would see themselves defending their classmates, but would be just as likely to hide beneath a desk and soil themselves. The headmaster of my school was named Mr. Jones, I've only ever spoken of him very rarely. On that day though I first came to really seriously consider the reality of reactions versus expectations of self.

Thankfully I still don't know if I would have soiled myself beneath a desk.

The trouble with knowing the extent of one's bravery, or the extent of one's goodness, kindness, any of the virtues we might dream of having within us is that we can write off the times when we fail as unimportant, somehow unworthy of the expenditure of our virtues, this connects most succinctly with the ideas expressed by Tim O'Brien. The flipside is that whenever we do live up to our virtues while we take comfort in ourselves there is always the sneaking doubt, the suspicion of a worse situation, one in which we would crumble, becoming something brutal or hateful.

I have always had a great faith in my own ability to love and care. I have done my share of horrible things to people, I have hated, I have been an asshole. Throughout it all I always told myself that it just wasn't important enough, that there was some situation or some person that would live up to the worthiness of my virtues. The dream lives on, but as just that, a dream, not a reality. We each sit and wait, wondering if we will ever know how brave, how loving, how kind, how forgiving, how compassionate or how determined we are.

Reality so often dissappoints, and when reality pulls through it is often we who end up dissappointing ourselves. But not today. Richard Bach penned the words: "I gave my life to become the person I am right now. Was it worth it?" Yes. Whole heartedly yes.

I don't think that I will ever know the extent of my virtues, I don't know if I'll ever truly know where any of my limits lie, to be honest I've never really believed in limits at all. There was a quote posted on the wall of one of my history classrooms in highschool which read "It's not what you know, it's what you think of in time." It may seem indirect, but I feel that this applies quite precisely to these issues. It doesn't matter what your limits are, what matters is what you actually do, what matters is if you summon the force of will and the strength of character at the key moments when it's needed. There is no way of knowing these things, we are all good people, everyone has the potential within them, and that potential is largely unlimited. The trick is that the only ones in control of any of this is us.

Tonight I am the man I always hoped I was and I will not be cut down by any man, woman or ideal set against me. The only person who can cut me down is me. I am real, and the real me is exactly who I expected.