The Moth Presents: All These Wonders: True Stories About Facing the Unknown

by Catherine Burns

I’m a highly organized pattern of mass and energy, one of 7 billion. In any objective accounting of the universe, I’m practically nothing, and soon I’ll cease to be. But the certainty of my own demise, the certainty of my own death, somehow makes my life more meaningful, and I think that is as it should be.

And I’m thinking about the fact that we imagine that we live in the light. We imagine we can foresee what’s gonna happen. We imagine we can control everything: I’m gonna do this, and I’m gonna do that. But the reality is, almost all of us are just stumbling along in the dark, searching, trying to reach some kind of home, while we’re juggling all these balls and hopefully on most days keeping them afloat.

Brave men are always afraid. Courage isn’t the absence of fear. It’s the willingness—the guts, if you like—to face the fear.