“I’ve been thinking all day that you and I are somewhat alike. We’re both rebels-only for different reasons…we were both conventional successes…we both fitted. If our corners were not rubbed off they were at least pulled in. But deep in us both was something that made us require more for happiness. I didn’t know what I wanted…I used to sit sometimes chewing at the insides of my mouth and thinking I was going crazy-I had a frightful sense of transiency…You see, I used to read all day and most of the night. I began to resent society…And then when I’d begun to feel that after all life was scarcely worth living I found something”-her eyes went skyward exultantly-“I found something!”
He waited and her words came with a rush.
“Courage-just that; courage as a rule of life, and something to cling to always. I began to build up this enormous faith in myself. I began to see that in all my idols in the past some manifestations of courage had unconsciously been the thing that attracted me. I began separating courage from the other things of life. All sorts of courage-the beaten, bloody prize-fighter coming up for more…the liking what you like always; the utter disregard for other people’s opinions-just to live as I liked always and to die in my own way…And courage to me meant ploughing through that dull gray mist that comes down on life-not only overriding people and circumstances but overriding the bleakness of living. A sort of insistence on the value of life and the worth of transient things.”
-F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Offshore Pirate
Photo: The Cowardly Lion, The Wizard of Oz
