The Most Important Meal of the Day

I was flipping eggs for breakfast this morning when the act inspired a memory, or triggered it, however you so please to perceive like events.  I remembered, to be specific, what my grandfather told me about flipping eggs: "The secret," he said "is testicular fortitude."  Seeing as how I cracked my first egg into a pan when I was about 10, this punchline flew straight over my head in a hurry.  But as I have gotten older I have realized the importance of that advice, and also what was wrong with it.

There are brave people and there are scared people; those who are brave only earned the characterization because they were once scared and overcame it; those who are scared are only scared because they were once brave and let their dim insecurities eclipse their fearlessness.  Any one can be scared or brave, but you can't be both at the same time.

But as I sat each piece of bread in its reflective toasting slot, the nature and gravity of that conclusion was processed a bit more than it had previously been.  First, I realized my grandpa's apparent chauvinism considering he brought balls into the equation; I put aside gender for this consideration, because I have learned as well as any undergraduate should, that women and men can be brave and scared just the same.  Second, that although these eggs were flipped with "(now) non-engendered fortitude" there were so many eggs that I have cooked and seen cooked whose yolks were scrambled and broken courtesy of someone being scared of the possibility of ruining them--make note that being scared leads to a self-fulfilling prophecy when preparing breakfast.

So upon considering those first eggs that I ruined, I think I ruined them because I was scared that I didn't have the courage to flip the damn things.  So I must give a tip of the cap to unrefined wisdom, in this case, as well as ancestry for guiding me along today's Musing of the Mind.  And as I reflect now on bravery and those who I think are brave, I remember that they had to flip their first eggs to become brave; they are brave because they continue to enjoy their breakfast favorite sunny-side up, or over-easy and know that they can fail--that they can break the yolk--but crack the egg into the pan bravely without concern and with the hope that today fate just might fry them a double yolk.

Is it real?  Do the eggs mean that much? Are my explorations of bravery and cowardice too overstated?

Is it me?  Is all this writing me projecting my anxiety of being scared?

Is it in my head? Is bravery really worth all this jazz?  Beowulf, Evil Knievil, Uri Gagarin: they were all brave, they all changed the world, is it too much to consider my ability to change things (or the way people think about them) as something dependent on bravery?

The answers lay with you, reader.

Finally, let me celebrate remembering the salt and pepper, despite this powerful epiphany.