The Coward, or the Tiger?

I stepped into the darkened room, and I knew something wasn’t right. “The hairs on the back of my neck stood on end,” as they say. Nothing in the room had changed, as far as I could tell in the nearly pitch-black, split-second survey I’d given it as I entered. That was not the problem.

There was someone else in there. Someone tall, well-hidden, and very close. Hiding next to the doorway! I instinctively tried to dash forward, out of his grasp, but it was too late—I felt an iron grip fasten itself around my neck.

Actually, I didn’t. Yeah, now that I think about it, nothing actually happened. There was no one in there. Come on—it was my bedroom! The worst thing that could be in there is one of my brothers trying to startle me—and, thank God, that hasn’t happened since 1996.

Yep, it was my imagination. And, so that you don’t take me for a delusion-prone lunatic, let me point out that I didn’t actually experience this as vividly as I described. It was more a little thought that popped into my head before I turned the light on: “Hey, what if there was somebody in here waiting for me, who wanted to kill me? Whew! Creepy! OK, turn on the light now.” An odd hypothetical question, to be sure. I’ll grant you that. But I wasn’t on the floor convulsing in a schizophrenic frenzy. Just to make that clear. Now where the heck was I?

Oh yeah. This little thought that popped into my head, it got me thinking. It got me thinking about how important a mindset can be. What if there was a hitman waiting for me inside my bedroom? In the mindset I had at that moment, I would have been scared to death—and guess where that would’ve led me? I’ll give you a hint: it’s what I was scared to.

There are different kinds of fear. I fear a nuclear war. I fear the results of our culture’s immorality. I fear several things in that way. But that fear is more of a thought process, more of a conclusion based on our principles. But there’s another type of fear, a visceral, instinctive one, like what I described in the opening paragraphs, that can be our downfall in perilous situations.

Put yourself in the hitman-bedroom scenario. Now replace yourself with a tiger. How would the hitman feel about grabbing a tiger by the neck? Not so eager, you see. Why is that? Well, the tiger would respond in a, shall we say, resentful way. The hitman has no right to grab that tiger by the neck, and the tiger has claws and teeth that will put forth that contention in quite a convincing fashion.

Here’s the fact, Jack: we all can choose to be the instinctive coward, or the tiger. There’s one of each inside all of us. Perhaps we’re not all tigers inside. Some of us might be gigantic Kodiak bears, or poisonous coral snakes. Heck, some of us are probably more like rabid chimps, or charging llamas. But the point is, we all have the potential inside of us—the sleeping beast, so to speak—who’s completely capable of unloading a potential can of Whoop-*** on anyone who threatens us.

Perhaps it wouldn’t be enough. The hitman might be able to choke the tiger, or shoot it. And another disclaimer—I’m not saying “never run—always fight! Hulk smash! Aargh!” No. I’m merely talking about that rare set of situations in which there is nothing to do but fight—and most of us haven’t ever been, and perchance won’t ever be, in those kinds of spots. But if we are, we need to be ready. Because destiny is decided in the instants, not the aeons. It’s the split-second decisions that make the most difference; they truly are the building blocks of life.

All I’m saying has been paraphrased by two great thinkers of yore, and they shall close this humble treatise:

I prithee, take thy fingers from my throat;
For, though I am not splenitive and rash,
Yet have I something in me dangerous,
Which let thy wiseness fear: hold off thy hand.

—Hamlet, from Shakespeare’s play, Act V, Scene 1

Don't hit at all if you can help it; don't hit a man if you can possibly avoid it; but if you do hit him, put him to sleep.
—Theodore Roosevelt (yep, that's him in the picture!)