Ten scenes ago in Gladiator i heard Marcus Aurelius say maximus had proven his valor yet again.
Been awhile since i heard that word.
Valor.
I looked it up even though i knew what it meant because it was such a foreign word to hear spoken.
Valor.
I have that. I have valor. Great courage. I have great courage.
I didn't used to. I knew that. I knew my weakness was i was scared of danger.
It upset me. Being like that. I was never a tough guy growing up. I wasn't bullied actively. But i took a lot of shit from bigger or better boys.
I knew being a bad boy. A tough guy. A courageous warrior. Was the one trait that was universally desired by girls of boys.
And despite being good with girls eventually, i was not one of them.
I was not a dangerous man.
I had little valor.
But how do you prove courage away from war? It's easy to be valorous when the danger is so intense and the difference between a coward and a hero is easy to see.
But away from battles, none of which seemed a good reason to get shot at, how was i to prove my courage?
Breaking the law. Deliberately. Civil disobedience. Martin Luther King had valor. Definitely. Gandhi. Yes. Emma Goldman. Absolutely. FUCKING WITH THE MAN.
Requires great courage. Because other than being shot stabbed or otherwise badly wounded, going to jail is the worst fucking thing that can happen to you.
It's a living death. All you want, is the future. Now is destroyed, in jail.
I risked that fate over. And over. And over. For good causes.
Like when i was arrested for telling that hospital in Weston i was going to have the building bulldozed and them all fired. Calling one particularly evil doctor all kinds of names.
Whenever i thought that the right thing and the legal thing didn't match, i chose the right thing. To prove someday to the right woman i was worthy of her.
Turns out i overdid it.
Because i am too courageous to find an equal as a mate.
It's not a desired virtue on the American left. Liberal women don't believe in male heroes.