CHOOSE COURAGE
Even when confronted with a bear.
Our family’s farm in a rural corner of Connecticut is lousy with American black bears. Every time an unwelcome visitor starts kicking up a ruckus in a more populated area, the good people at Environmental Protection relocate the unruly ursine to our environs. Our neighborhood is like a bear rehab. I’m always thrilled to view these magnificent animals in the woods, but from afar.
One fine fall day I was strolling down our road in the hills near our farm, returning home from a long walk. It was a beautiful day and the gentle pace in nature was helping me get over a pain flare. A car approached me from the opposite direction, and came to a stop. “There’s a bear down there, but don’t worry, it’s only a cub,” the driver said. I thanked him and walked on, being sure to make noise as I went, so as not to startle the young bear with my looming presence.
A couple hundred yards down the road, I heard rustling in the forest on my right and I suddenly realized with great clarity that I didn’t want to encounter a bear of any age or size. Just as I was having my epiphany, the cub emerged from the trees about 20 feet away. He looked plenty big enough to me--not full grown, but more of a yearling than a cute little Teddy cub. Roughly a young Danny DeVito sized bear.
I had studied up on what to do, as I’d always known there was a chance that I might encounter one up close. I made myself “big” by raising my arms over my head. I didn’t look the cub in the eyes. I spoke in a calm and even tone. I don’t remember what exactly I said but it must have greatly angered him, because he let out a bowel-evacuatingly scary growl and charged me. He didn’t bite or claw me, but he did ram me with his shoulder as he went by, before turning and running back into the woods.
The blow caused me to stagger back a few steps, and I was lucky to stay on my feet, as I’m not very steady to begin with. I didn’t know what to do. At this point I heard a crashing noise in the forest to my left, and I recalled that a bear cub is never far from its mother. I was now in the proverbial worst place in the woods—between a mother bear and her cub.
I couldn’t see the mama yet, but I knew enough not to turn and leg it, because the bears could move faster than me, and there was no elderly person or small child nearby for me to outrun. I moved away slowly, still babbling nonsense in what I hoped was a calm tone. I took careful steps backward, praying that I wouldn’t trip and fall.
The mama bear came charging out of the forest and ran across the road and into the woods where the cub had gone. I paused for a bit, wondering if it was safe to reverse course and head home. The mama bear had other ideas. She came back out of the woods and began patrolling back and forth, blocking my way. She was big, maybe 200 pounds.
I tried to call for help, but I had no cell service. I had no choice but to pace and wait for rescue. I have no sense of smell, but I knew that when the small bear charged me, he left his scent on my clothing. I knew the mama could smell it too, and identify me as the bipedal bear-botherer.
Before very long I heard a car approaching and when it came around the bend I waved it down. The driver came to a stop in the middle of the road and opened the passenger window a couple inches. “There’s a bear down there, her cub charged at me, can you give me a ride?” I blurted. And the woman said, “I don’t know you.” It was just my luck that at this moment the mama bear had retreated into the woods.
I pleaded with the woman that this was a matter of safety. I was nearly in tears. “I live at the farm right down the road!” “Well, I’ll drive along next to you while you walk.” This would have left me just as exposed to the vigilant mama bear. I’m a middle-aged broad with the muscle tone of a raw clam and I don’t think my appearance is intimidating, especially in yoga pants and ballet slippers.
I couldn’t force my way into her car. I told her, “Okay, go, I will find somebody who will help me.” I was weak in the knees, tears welling in my eyes, trembling with a confluence of emotions. I was angry and disappointed that she wouldn’t help a fellow human. I wasn’t asking for a kidney, I was asking to sit in the trunk of her car to get safely home. My house was in the direction she was going anyway! As this Bad Samaritan drove away, I reflected that if I did get mauled, at least she’d feel extremely guilty when she read my obituary.
For 20 nerve-racking minutes I watched the mama bear walking her beat, perhaps thinking of recipes. Finally another car came along and this time the driver was willing to give me a lift.
When I got back home and had the ability to sip a mug of tea without shaking, I thought about bravery. I didn’t think I’d been brave in facing down the bear cub and its mamma. I was stuck in the situation; I had no choice but to do my best. The woman who refused to let me in her car—she was a coward. She had a choice to make and she chose fear.
A great number of our choices are fear-based. There is a lot to fear and it’s easy to fall prey to the emotion. This has been a nerve-jangling century. It began with the 2000 election, followed by haunting horrors of 9/11, the ensuing wars, more terrorism, economic collapse, Ebola, SARS, bird flu, political jackassery, Zika, racial injustice, environmental crisis, COVID-19, and rule by a kakistocracy. We’ve had the pants scared off us on numerous occasions.
You don’t set out to be brave in the face of everything that’s hurled at you. It’s within everyone to be brave. Courage is not absence of fear, it’s acting in the face of fear. Each day brings risks, everything from slipping on a banana peel, to ripping a foghorn fart in a religious service, to getting pancaked by a meteor. You don’t quiver in your room under the covers, though, you get up and go out in the world.
Every day, people walk around out in the open, even though falling blue ice from an airplane toilet could plummet 30,000 feet and turn them into a stinky flattened corpse. We face up to the dangers, and perhaps even laugh at them. As Seneca said, “Sometimes just to live is an act of bravery.”
Since we all have this resource of courage, why don’t we celebrate it? We tend to focus more on our negative thoughts, as if somehow our fears and anxieties are more important than kindness and generosity. Our finer qualities like resilience and bravery, these should be our valued virtues. You can become braver by changing your way of thinking. Honor and nurture your courage. Shift your attention from worry to anticipation. Franklin Delano Roosevelt said, “Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the assessment that something else is more important than fear.” You have the power to make that assessment.