The Difference Between Bravery and Stupidity??

I’ve always thought of myself as a relatively brave person.  I have faced down wild adult lions in the tall grass savannah of Botswana, I hung out for several hours with a mostly friendly troop of gorillas in Uganda and I survived a near death experience while rafting the Zambezi river in Zimbabwe.  The most courageous part of all this is that I did all of that without soiling myself in any way.  I was mostly unafraid while facing these dangers (except the near drowning part, that did really frighten me quite a bit, but only for a minute).

 

Some might say that I was stupid for taking these unnecessary risks, but I really never felt that way (except for a minute while drowning and I got over it pretty quick).  I pretty much felt in control during those situations and I believe that it was this sense of control that allowed me the ability not to soil my pants.  In my mind, at least, I felt able to mitigate the risk by understanding and controlling it with knowledge.

 

For instance, I knew that the lions don’t typically see healthy adult humans as prey.  As it happened, we were all in a situation where the lions were just as surprised to see three big guys in a small clearing as we were to see two full grown lionesses come trotting out of the tall grass.  The lions looked quizzically at us and thankfully just continued trotting, just as I expected.

 

The gorillas were a slightly different matter.  We purposely set out and hiked through the cloud forest for some time in order to locate them.  Prior to this trip, I realized that conditioning was going to be important, so I had spend six months or so working out to prepare for the cloud forest hike at 8000 ft. altitude and in near 100% humidity and 90 degree temperatures.  The truth is, I had an ulterior motive in this conditioning.  I mostly just wanted to be able to run faster and farther than my buddy George, should a retreat have been necessary.  I did not need to be the fastest in the group; I just wanted to be sure that I was not the slowest.  Once again, I felt that this helped to mitigate the risk and this small amount of control made me more comfortable with the situation.

 

White water rafting the Zambezi River with its many class 6 rapids just seemed like too great of an opportunity to pass up, while staying in Victoria Falls Zimbabwe.  I had always been a very strong swimmer; I even passed a fairly exhaustive Lifeguard training class, so I had no fear of a nice little raft ride.  I was quite comfortable that the risk was mitigated by my abilities.  Well, as it turned out, my luck nearly ran out that day.  We flipped the raft in a class 6 rapid and instead of holding on to the rope around the raft; I got separated from the raft as it went over.  The turbulent water sucked me into an eddy and I was rolled repeatedly like in an industrial washing machine.  I had no sense of up or down until finally I caught a glimpse of light and swam to it, finally popping up just before trying to determine whether I could breathe water.

 

At any rate, my point in sharing this ancient history is that these were all risks that I understood and accepted willingly.  We are now facing a totally different reality with Coronavirus and I really don’t know how to respond to it.  I don’t think anyone really has the knowledge to completely make this risk manageable and that is making me crazy.  I suppose that all we can really do is follow the lead of our Government Officials and the Medical Community.  Ignoring Coronavirus is stupid, because most of us just don’t know enough to adequately understand the risk.  Hopefully, it won’t be too long before we will all see that spot of light that will lead us safely away from the danger.  For now all I can really say is be brave, but don’t be stupid and above all try not to soil yourself!!