Leopards might not change spots, but cowardly lions can gain courage

By David McElroy · September 4, 2011

Are you a coward? For much of my life, I’ve been one — at least a large part of the time. I’ve drifted along avoiding things that scared me, acting as though I could somehow cheat my fears without having to face them. I’m at the point in life where I can’t do that anymore.

I can either face the fears and become who I’m supposed to be or I can go back to hiding in cowardice. Now that I understand the truth about what I’ve done, though, I don’t think I can put it back into a box and hide it on a shelf. I have to confront the fears — and become the person God made me to be.

I’ve been thinking a lot about this issue since the first of the year. Something happened that made me ask myself whether I was going to continue being less than my best or if I intended to make the changes necessary to be who I wanted to be. If I’d realized all the implications of that when I started thinking about it, I might have run. But I didn’t. And once I let myself go down that road, I didn’t have any choice but to follow some trails to their logical conclusion.

Over the past few years, I’ve had to face the truth that I’ve sabotaged many things in my life. There have been times when I’ve stood on the brink of success and happiness, but I turned away because I was afraid. I had to come to an understanding of why I’d done that to myself. It wasn’t pleasant. It wasn’t easy to confront. But I think I’m a better man for having done it.

We mostly talk here about the future of society and the current insane political system, so this might not seem related, but I think it is. We’re facing some potentially scary times. People who are cowards are going to have trouble dealing with those times. Their personal lives are going to be wrecks and they’re not going to be able to stand up and do what’s right when the time comes that will require great courage.

Whether you choose to stay where you’re currently living or to move on to somewhere you might be able to build a new life for your family, times might be very hard. If you’ve been a typical, soft American consumer, you might not be ready for that. You might have even been like me — drifting along without fulfilling your potential or your dreams or even a calling. If so, this is a really good time to find some courage and put the cowardice aside. Now that my eyes are open to what I’d been doing to myself, I don’t have any other choice.

I might never become everything I want to become. I might never get all of my needs fulfilled. I might go to my grave with secret unfulfilled loves or needs. I might never feel that I can achieve all the things I missed out on by being a coward for this long. Maybe. But from now on, if I fail to have my needs and goals met, it won’t be because I didn’t go after them. It won’t be because I was a coward.

I’m angling for a “courage medal,” but I haven’t earned it yet. I just know I can’t live with myself anymore if I act like a coward.

Share on Social Networks

I have no use for the theocratic and repressive government of Iran. The people who run the country are cruel at best and evil at worst. The Iranian people deserve freedom. But I have no personal quarrel with anybody in Iran. While I’m not thrilled about a future Iranian government having nuclear weapons, I’m just as concerned about nukes in the hands of politicians in Israel, Pakistan, India, China and Russia. I’m not even thrilled with the U.S., Britain and France having them, either, because I don’t trust any politicians to be responsible with such terrible weapons. All I can say with certainty is that American taxpayers have no business attacking Iran, especially since we’re being forced to pay for this attack in order to benefit the politicians of Israel — and nobody else. If Middle Eastern countries want to fight among themselves, that’s none of my business. It’s not the business of the U.S. government, either. I have no quarrel with anybody in Iran — and having the government which claims to represent me launch an unprovoked attack against a sovereign country will only make all Americans less safe in the near future. This attack is poorly conceived and morally unjustified. Remember that when the Iranians launch attacks that we will then condemn as “terrorism.” What the U.S. is doing right now looks like terrorism to me. And let’s not forget that the attack is the latest in a long line of unconstitutional wars by various U.S. presidents — who have no legal power to declare war on their own, according to the U.S. Constitution.

A child having a tantrum understands only one thing: Did I get my way or not? He doesn’t understand the issues involved. He doesn’t understand the reasons that went into a decision. He doesn’t understand any of the things that mature and reasonable adults have to understand in order to live healthy lives. By his reaction to the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling to strike down his disastrous tariff scheme, Donald Trump shows himself to be — once more — a screaming child having a tantrum. Outside the world of mob bosses who expect to get their way every time, normal adults don’t act this way, but Trump isn’t normal. He’s an angry and vengeful man who has narcissistic personality disorder. And we are in danger as a result. Trump doesn’t understand the legal issues involved in this ruling. He doesn’t understand economics. He doesn’t understand rule of law. He doesn’t understand that he can ever be wrong. All he understands is that he didn’t get his way. And he is now a narcissistic and raging little boy who also happens to hold life-and-death power over most humans on this planet. He’s dangerous — and the system which gives him that power is even more dangerous.

Is it an attempt to blur the gender line between men and women? Or is it some weird tribute to the traditional Scottish kilt? It’s hard to say, but fashion designers keep pushing for men to wear skirts in the last few years. Both men and women in modern fashion seem oddly androgynous, as though it would be offensive for a man to look manly or for a woman to look feminine. A CNN article about the latest fashions from Paris caught my attention Monday and left me wondering about the ugly clothes the designers are hawking. If a man wants to wear a skirt — or a kilt — that’s OK with me, but I’ll stick with a traditional dark suit with a white shirt and tie. (Well, when I’m not wearing t-shirts and sweats, of course.) I always wonder who actually buys the outlandish garb from fashion designers anyway. I would be humiliated to be seen in any of this stuff, but I obviously have no sense of high fashion.

If you have problems with high blood pressure, I’d like to encourage you to consider making serious changes to your diet. There might be some people who don’t have any choice but to start taking prescription medications for high blood pressure, but I’d like to tell you that I have completely eliminated my issue by eliminating all sugar and almost all carbohydrates. (A couple of months ago, my blood pressure hit 185/144, which was dangerously high — considered stage 3 hypertension.) By completely changing my eating habits, I’m down 22 pounds and my blood pressure is now in the “ideal” range — without taking any medication. In addition, I sleep better and I have more energy. Getting away from the sugar-laden mess that we generally refer to as “highly processed food” has been a life-changer for me. Now my challenge is to avoid slipping back into old habits — by eating in the dangerous ways that almost everyone in our society has come to see as normal.

When I first heard about this, I thought it must be satire. When I discovered it was real, I was appalled, but I still thought it must be a one-time thing from some nutty activist. But it turns out it’s the latest bit of pandering to a bunch of far-left activists who believe that a man can become a woman if he decides to claim he’s a woman. As everybody knows, men have prostate glands. Women do not. Period. End of story. Men can get prostate cancer. Women cannot. But political activists are so eager to pretend that a man claiming to be a “trans woman” is really a woman that they are insisting that “women” be included in public health messages about the issue. This is nothing but political virtue-signaling. If you’re a man, you know which parts you have. You know that you ought to be screened. Nobody is made any safer by dragging far-left gender ideology into simple medical reality.

Related Posts