Daring Despite the Danger

“The known, our current story, protects us from the unknown, from chaos—which is to say, provides our experience with determinate and predictable structure. … When we are in the domain of the known, so to speak, there is no reason for fear. Outside that domain, panic reigns. … Involuntary exposure to chaos means accidental encounter with the forces that undermine the known world. The affective consequences of such encounter can be literally overwhelming. It is for this reason that individuals are highly motivated to avoid sudden manifestations of the unknown. And this is why individuals will go to almost any length to ensure that their protective cultural ‘stories’ remain intact.” —Jordan Peterson, Maps of Meaning: The Architecture of Belief

My life has been bound by good sense, rules, institutional schoolthink, art and literature, faith, hope, love, responsibility, and fear.

I grew up in a small town on a street filled with kids. Quite often the entire lot of us were in the giant Norway spruces next door playing Cowboys and Indians or running the bases on the road at the end of my lawn. Some days, I was on my own (which, for an introvert like me, was fine); on others, just a few of us were making believe somewhere within earshot of home. I remember one day, when I was probably seven or eight, getting called to the garage across the street by Alan, a boy four years older than I. I’m pretty I was playing with another kid or two, possibly my brother and/or sister, but I don’t think so. Be that as it may, we ran over to see what Alan wanted, and he held up a glass tube with something silver inside. “Look what my father gave me,” he said, before uncapping the end and pouring a strange, thick, silver liquid onto a workbench. He touched the stuff, and it moved in a funny way. Sometimes it was a blob with a small ball or two of itself nearby. Alan could use his finger to separate it into more balls, and we were all quite mesmerized. At one point, he got it back in the tube and told me to hold out my hands. I did, and he poured the liquid metal (metallic liquid?) into my cupped palms. I think it was cold. I made it roll and move, nudged it with my finger, and watched it like I might a creature with a mind of its own. One of us asked Alan, “What is it?” and he replied (probably while pushing his glasses back onto the bridge of his nose), “Mercury. Quick silver.”

The Show and Tell took place shortly before lunch, I think, and soon enough, we were straggling back to our homes to eat. Dad was in the rocking chair in the kitchen when I walked in, and I excitedly told him about what Alan had shared with us. “What?” he exclaimed. “Mercury? That’s poison! Go wash your hands, and use soap.”

What had I done? Poison? I was deathly afraid of poison. Was I going to die? Was Alan going to die? I soaped up over and over and ran back to Alan’s garage as soon as possible to tell him that he needed to wash his hands. I probably lost more than a little sleep over my uncertain fate, but thankfully, I am still here to the tell the story—although Alan is not. He grew up to become a minister in the Nazarene Church and then somehow succumbed to pneumonia when his six kids were far too young to be without a father and his wife still needed a husband.

The good news is that poison substances no longer fill me with fright (I stopped going to Girl Scouts in second grade, because we once used toxic mothball flakes in a craft project), but I still treat them with a healthy respect. I wish I could say that I’m less risk averse than I used to be. I can’t, but I do manage to surprise myself with courageous acts on a regular basis. I’m not saying that I’m scooping puppies from raging rivers or thwarting purse snatchers. My brand of courage has more to do with finding the strength to learn about how the world really works, to read the stuff that I once avoided like the plague, and then to share much of what I’ve found, to carry my candle to someone who doesn’t see, because evil—when it’s not parading around and mocking all that’s good—lurks in the dark cellars and cobwebbed corners most decent folk tend to avoid. I’ve not yet worked up the courage to face some things labelled “generally regarded as safe,” but every time I stare down something that used to intimidate me, I fortify myself for the next round.