I was listening to a most interesting podcast this morning: Big Ideas (a TVO production) with Jordan Peterson, a U of Toronto Professor of Psychology, entitled Slaying the Dragon Within Us. The speaker started by talking about rats. This was especially curious because I was also already thinking about the proposed dinner of ratatouille that one of my flatmates would cook tonight.
Turns out, rats are basically programmed to fear cats (go figure!). Even if a rat has never seen a cat before, in it's entire life, if it so much as smells a cat somewhere, the rat will immediately flee and return to the safety of it's burrow. There, inside, it will scream for 24 hours! The other rats nearby will be alerted and will remain inside. The speaker comments that this is an especially long period of time to spend screaming, considering a rat only has a lifespan of about one year.
Wait a minute, Sean, you said this was about courage. Right, I'm getting there!
After the screaming is over, the rat re-emerges and does what? Returns to the scene of the smell! It will very carefully run across a small part of the area, then hide. Then run across a slightly bigger area, then hide. It repeats this 'scouting mission' until it determines the area to be safe. Then, and only then, does the creature resume normal rat activities: eating, being sociable at rat house parties, mating, and otherwise annoying humans.
So, the way to look at it is thus: what 'cats' are out there that have you running scared? Do you hide away from your fears for an especially long period of time before you emerge to confront them? Do you emerge to confront your fears at all? Some might say that the rat who returns to the scene of the smell is a stupid animal and soon to be cat food. Perhaps. But it takes courage to go back and see if the coast is clear. And if the cat is gone, then the whole world is that rats oyster...er, garbage can?
