Teach cowardice. My close friend

February 07, 2002

Teach cowardice. My close friend Paul and I sat in my car after the gig (I played tonight) and talked for a long time. Talking for a long time usually brings you around to some really good ideas. All the currents and back-eddies of conversation eventually add up to something. It could be a real aphorism or a belly laugh over a fart joke. If there are moments of brilliance they are what you save for songs. If you cram enough of them together you can pretend that they just fell out that way and you look like a genius. In reality you talked or wrote or thought for hours, days, weeks, years and those three sentences were the result. I guess the idea is to talk and write as much as you can in private. You can then throw away all the yammering and fluff and pretend that you wrote it as a first draft. The two words I used to start tonight's meandering blab were, "teach cowardice". If we teach our kids to be more afraid of getting hurt then maybe it will help them see the line that you just shouldn't cross. Where did that line go? was it erased by Roadrunner cartoons? If you drop an anvil on someone it will kill them. Killing them is bad. You shouldn't kill them because then bad things will happen to you. Either you'll get killed or go to jail. Maybe you will spend the afterlife in a flaming sesspool. If we are giving into the idea that it's every person for themselves then wouldn't it be OK to council people that harming others just brings it all back home? If you don't care about others then at least leave them alone to help ensure you don't get hurt yourself. It is noble to die for a cause but its more important to live to see another day. OK...OK...I know I've shot hoops by myself as a teenager and whispered (to myself), "If you don't sink this next one then your whole family will be wiped out in a flood". That provided me some incentive to score. Artificially raising the stakes in this manner proved one thing. My family being wiped out seemed to be the worst thing I could think of... and...when it comes down to it we all want to be heros. Some would argue that the lesson learned is that basketball can be really important to some people.
There is a conscious part of hero behaviour and an unconscious component as well. The hero said, "I just jumped into the raging river to save her officer and I didn't even think about it at all". I truly believe that this is a human instinct. Rush into the burning building. The fear falls away. The conscious part of hero behaviour is the sad part. Its the part where someone creates their own opportunity to become a hero. This is where cowardice comes in. Its getting late and my logical path is overgrown with fatigue so I'll try to sew this up. Columbine. There's the nail. Those kids lost track and the sanctity of human life was lost. They didn't even know how to apply real value to their own lives. Cowards REALLY value their own lives and, therefore, might just have a chance to understand the value of other people's lives as well. The lightbulb might go on when they realize that other people feel the same way they do. Scared. All hail the coward.