The word fearless.

I cannot stand this word.

I believe it’s used in all the wrong ways. Thrown up on a pedestal and used to signify strength. A characteristic others want to emulate.

I do not.

I believe fearlessness is how people end up dead, maimed, breaking hearts, and destroying individual worth.

Fearlessness is foolish, self-centered, ignorant, and quite frankly, clueless.

Fearlessness is the small child, who, having been told the oven is on and not to touch the burner, decides to reach out and touch it regardless, getting burned.

It is the young child in all of us who hasn’t learned what pain is, who jumps off the roof and breaks their arm.

Fearlessness is unthinking.

Fearlessness believes it is untouchable, invulnerable to harm.

If you’re fearless, you must also be unfeeling.

Courage.

Courage is what we need.

Courage knows fear, intimately. Terror, the horror of the unknown or knowing the pain that’s about to descend.

And still, courage steps forward and does it anyway.

Courage faces its fears.

Courage knows the pain of loss but recognizes that beyond the risks lies the desired result, the success, the rewards.

Courage looks with the heart and mind, the intuition and reality. It weighs intellect with the desire of the heart and makes decisions based on truth.

The courageous soul stalks forward through the darkness, the pain, the fear.

Stop requiring fearlessness.

What we need is courage.