Courage and fire

You awake from a deep slumber not sure at first what woke you. You take a few deep breaths and begin coughing as you realize the air is hot and filled with thick ash and smoke. Your eyes pop open with alarm as you realize the building is on fire and the heat and the crackling of bright orange flames all around is most likely what woke you.

You are still not fully awake yet and you begin to panic. There are no windows in your bedroom. There are flames all around you and the door is extremely hot to the touch. You are trapped inside. You are paralyzed with a mind numbing fear that death is just around the corner. You can't breath and all around you the flames are getting closer, seemingly reaching out towards you, licking at your flesh. You begin to regret all the thing you meant to do but never got a chance to. And then...

Just when all hope is lost, a superhero wearing a flame retardant suit, including a helmet and breathing mask, bursts through the door with axe in hand. The firefighter sees you cowering there on the floor and quickly rescues you, carrying you outside to safety.

I really do see firefighters as super heroes because I think it takes a massive amount of courage to run into a burning building when everyone else is doing their best to get out of it. They face head on what other people run away from.

But what is courage? Is it idiocy? Or lunacy? Is it lack of fear? Or lack of knowledge of the gravity of a given situation? It is none of the above. Courage is seeing a dangerous situation and intentionally putting yourself in harms way because it is the only way to prevent greater harm to yourself or others. Courage is knowing exactly how dangerous a thing is and what is at stake and doing it anyways because it must be done.

A courageous person is one who knows that what he does is dangerous but feels that he has to do it because he is the only one who can or will and he feels that that thing must be done. Courage is not immunity to fear. It is doing what must be done in spite of fear.

Firefighters go into burning buildings because they know there are people inside who will die if they do not.They know full well that they themselves could die in the process.They take every precaution to lessen the chance of that happening, but it can and still does happen from time to time.

Police officers and soldiers get to deal with some of the same really difficult circumstances. The enemy often has better equipment, more training and other tactical advantages. Yet they push aside their fear of death and through courage and discipline win a victory for the forces of "good". Often these victories are won in the face of likely or even certain death.

Firemen, police officers,soldiers, to me all these men and women are heroes but in different ways. Each job takes courage as each has its own serious hazards. I have not chosen either of these three jobs as my profession. But I wonder how I would do if I did. I like to think of myself as courageous as I am sure you do too.

But how would we hold up under fire, literally? Could I be one of these courageous super heroes? Could you?