Cheryl Strayed (author of Wild, and the excellent Dear Sugar columns) was interviewed by the Rumpus. She writes:

“One thing that I think is important when it comes to bravery, is that it’s not necessarily about doing something and not being afraid. It’s about doing something even though you are afraid, and I think that idea has been very powerful for me over time. Whenever I’ve written something that makes me scared, which I write an awful lot, I remember that being scared is not an indication that I shouldn’t do it. It’s actually an indication that I should.”

This made me think of elephants. A year and a half ago I was in Thailand and having a conversation with a man who works almost exclusively with elephants that have killed more than one person. Mien San Dee is just over 5 feet fall and he was born with one leg much shorter than the other. He walks with a pronounced limp. He is slight, soft spoken. He has three elephants staked within a few hundred feet of his house that have each killed before, sometimes more than three different people. No one else in his village wants these elephants. They are smart, can be calculating, they weigh more than a car and move quickly. Many elephants are angry that they are chained. Every one else is too scared to be near them.

“Why aren’t you scared?” I asked Mien San Dee.

“I am,” he said. “That is very important.”