Was the courage you had in your first youth different from the courage you have now?

Were you braver because you were more foolish, didn’t fully understand the possible consequences of your actions, or more daring because you felt invincible?

Or were you anxious as a younger person, fearful of being judged harshly by others, wishing for invisibility, unlikely to take risks because the results of failure, or the mere possibility of it, were not worth the effort?

“With my first round of courage,” says my friend Rose Reyes, “I didn’t know any better. I just did. Experience now lets me strategize and lets me allow others to go for it if they have the stamina and a fully resourced first-aid kit.”

For Rose, the wisdom that comes with maturity has allowed her to harvest her own courage and help those who take reasonable risks.

Another friend, Kathleen Delano, explains her journey to the clarity that true courage demands in unflinching terms: “When I was younger, death was something that happened to other people. When I was younger, I drank my courage. Now I’m mortal and sober.” Delano's sobriety gives her strength to face life's challenges without disguising or distorting them, understanding that alcohol can blur reality but never change it. "Mortal and sober" is a declaration of self-reliance.

Replacing recklessness with self-reliance is the definition of being a grown-up.

Some of us, however, had to learn to feel safe enough to achieve recklessness.

Let me explain: I had no courage whatsoever as a child. I was a scared kid and nobody around me knew what to do about it. Informed by a combination of old wives’ tales, soap operas, and Dr. Spock, the adults in my family were baffled by my uneasy relationship to the ordinary world. I was afraid of dogs, unfamiliar neighborhoods, the dark, and silence.

It........

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