Philosophy isn't a topic I feel like I have any kind of expertise in. I didn't go to school for it, and I've never really looked into it as a field of study. Any kind of philosophizing I've ever done has come from my own experiences.

But I'm 37 now. I've got a lot of experiences.

I try to use them to make shit interesting.

I hope I'm successful.


.


"What," Ryo asked, "is courage?"

Noa hummed. "Courage, huh?" His brow furrowed. "I guess the first part of figuring out how to answer this is . . . asking a clarifying question: do you consider courage to be separate from bravery?"

"Yes," Ryo said immediately, "but not for any reason I can defend. So, for the purposes of this discussion, no."

Noa rubbed his chin. "Courage," he said, "is what it takes to outlast fear."

"Outlast," Ryo repeated, confused but interested. "What do you mean, outlast?"

"When people talk about being brave, or courageous," Noa said, "there's usually this notion of pushing past fear. Defeating it. Maybe even not feeling it in the first place." He held up a finger. "That last one is the most ridiculous, because if you aren't afraid of something to begin with, then courage doesn't come into it at all. The presence of fear is required before you ever start talking about courage."

"I see." Ryo nodded. "I like that."

"But," Noa went on, "sometimes the fear is too big to push past, or defeat. Sometimes it's so big that you just kind of . . . exist inside it." He didn't have to say that he was talking about the cage; Ryo knew already. "When you can't run, when you can't fight, when you can't push, there's only one thing left: you hunker down, you grit your teeth, and you survive."

Ryo smiled; he didn't say anything, not with words.

"Surviving," Noa said, "is just as brave as fighting. You need that. You need to be brave to live through something horrifying, to wait, to see if there's a better tomorrow waiting for you. To keep waking up, to keep existing, to not give up . . . that's its own form of fighting, and it's too hard to just disregard it. I don't think it's fair to anyone to say you need to push past fear. To not let it control you. Sometimes it will control you. Sometimes it will win. Sometimes you will be a coward, and sometimes you'll do something that shames you to your core."

Ryo didn't need to guess that Noa was talking to himself.

"And to get back up," Noa continued, "to dust yourself off, to try again. To keep living, even when every part of you says that you shouldn't. Whether it's apathy or spite or anything in between, I think that's still courage. It's still noble. I'm not about to judge someone for running away, for letting fear control them. Especially if they're trying to claw their way back up. But even if they're just . . . existing. That's courage all on its own."

"Do you think my father is courageous?"

"Yes," Noa said. "I do."

"Do you . . . do you think I'm courageous?" Ryo asked, carefully, quietly.

"I think you're one of the most courageous men I've ever met," Noa said.

". . . What about your father?"

"Trickier," Noa admitted, "but . . . ultimately, yes. I don't know if there's anybody who doesn't have any courage in them. I think it's an innate quality, just like fear. It's a response to fear. There's no way for someone to not have it. The only people who have no courage are the ones who have nothing at all: the dead and buried."