Let me tell you a secret about whoop-ass. If I tell you that I am tough, hard, cold… bad - odds are that I’m probably not. That kind of information would be on a need-to-know basis. Any kind of expertise - and that certainly includes whoop-assery - is characterized by the same universal law: the more you know, then the more you realize that there is to know, and the lower your relative self-evaluation. If you’re really bad-ass, you aren’t modest, you are realistic.
Discretion, valor’s better half, can be defined as “having or showing discernment or good judgment in conduct and especially in speech”. Ironically then, discretion is circumspect and unobtrusive about its own identity crisis. Because the word discretion is most often used to refer to the omission of something unpleasant, yet discernment and good judgment are often demonstrated by the opposite. And that’s where I get stuck. My dislike of what I see as cowardice and dishonesty have reached such a unyielding force in the current of my thoughts that it threatens to divert their course completely. And yet I’m not quite sure what it means.
I value bravery of a mundane, personal type. I admire people who are genuine, whatever they express. While I am fascinated by people who construct their personality as a kind of self-referential art project, inevitably I find the performance sadly lacking. The poem without the poet. Those who venture out into the world to meet me, and anyone else, without the armor of an artfully constructed facade demand and keep my attention. You see it in little spontaneous moments.
Perhaps I am curious.  Perhaps I am charmed by the charismatics I have seen practice this. My stepfather is so charming that I can barely keep my jaw from dropping at times. I’ve watched him for years as he walks a block to the grocery store and is stopped along the way by a half-dozen people to chat. No one, ever, has said a bad thing about him to me. He seems to walk through the world as one of the beloved, because he is genuine. Genuinely warm, genuinely funny, gentle and clear in his own purpose. It’s true that J is clever, widely-read, and a fascinating conversationalist. He is quick-witted and can talk to almost anyone about almost anything. I believe he has afforded himself the freedom to develop these fine skills because he never bothered to spend time constructing a facade behind which to hide.