Discretion is Advised.

You are walking down a dimly lit street in a dangerous section of town. The windows of the tenements you pass are broken or boarded up. Occasionally, you hear muttering. You cannot tell which direction to avoid: the sound is all around you. Cars that have been stripped and burned litter the street. Just outside the broken down door of a building that was once a house lays a blood stained mattress.

In your pocket you have seven one hundred dollar bills and several twenties. You are wearing a gold Rolex. The ring on the hand in your pocket has a diamond John D. Rockefeller wouldn’t have been able to afford. Your shoes are Jimmy Choo. Your bag, Louis Vuitton.

Knowing that you are in a bad neighborhood and that you have far more valuables on you than really necessary, would you start skipping and singing “The Sun Will Come Out Tomorrow”?

What is courage?

Courage is difficult to pin down. It’s a quality that is not independent of itself. One can only demonstrate her capacity for courage when the time comes to prove herself. In other words, courage cannot exist in a vacuum.

So how does one prove herself courageous before the horde of zombie turkeys rise up from their Thanksgiving tables to feast on their cooks?

There are at least a million ways to prove one’s capacity for bravery. You don’t have to go sky diving or white water rafting over waterfalls or base jumping or bull fighting or do any of the adrenalin rattled things people do to prove themselves or for the endorphin high.