The One About Being Brave
People always tell me I am brave. I am hot brave. I’m a first responder and when shit kicks off, I am - pound for pound - not shabby. Saved a lady’s life once, on freezing tarmac underneath a bin lorry. And I once punched an attacking bull mastiff in the face repeatedly to the point that the local police report nicknamed me Mike Tyson on the report. Broke my left hand, but Whitney and I got out alive. Rabies treatment is a very interesting experience though, and force your hand straight down their throat if a dog attacks you - thanks Uncle Bill Holmes for that tip. Not so lovely to do, but a useful bit of information. And it works.
Cold courage is a different thing. Cold courage is facing up to some bad shit, and going in anyway. Few people possess cold courage. Fewer people possess the ability to deploy it.
With the world melting down around us, my thoughts turn to these things. My best friend was a UN peacekeeper in the Balkans for a spell. Rolling about in a tank, doing UN things. He said the thing that broke his heart were the girls who were being trafficked by their ‘uncles’, drugged up and passed out in the car, but with the UN, you can’t take any action. Then finding the bodies of those girls in laybys the following day. Because they’d got a bit fighty and then thrown away like trash. Always strangled. Because strangling costs nothing.
You see, if this was me, and I was in a tank, I’d just mow those fuckers over. In my tank. Then I’d reverse it. Do it again and again until they were pulp. Then shoot them afterwards, to make sure. This is why I am not a UN peacekeeper.
My best mate is back in the Balkans, with all this endless disaster going on. We are on sketchy comms, but I said, ‘This time you are not a peacekeeper’.
There he is, ploughing back into a hellscape of roughness, day after day. Seeing all the things no one wants to see. Holding out in the face of the terrible darkness that is what people can do to each other. That’s cold courage.