Our school’s motto reads: “When daring fails the true game begins.” The promise of a liberal education is entirely contained in those words, and they still ring true today. But perhaps they should not. Perhaps daring has not yet failed.
We are all trained in the desperate, clutching cunning of smugglers and pirates. I can remember learning with glee the seven methods appropriate for coercing a child into signing a land deal. Many of us have served as intern bandits or cutthroats, and a lucky few have done research fellowships in corporate fraud and political corruption.
Even massive revisions of the program of study cannot change things. The new Core curriculum provides for the inclusion of “alternative voices,” like racketeers and brigands, who bring new perspectives. This strengthens our school’s reputation for producing a hard and cruel citizen of the world. But what good is cruelty without daring?
I am not denying that the program is popular. Freshmen enjoy learning how to extract debts from debtors, or how to drive competitors to drink, or how to impersonate members of the clergy.
In today’s brutal and amoral environment, however, even the most sophisticated thug training is cold comfort. Students’ time would be better spent if they did not study, and instead dared.
What is daring? you ask. Do not ask again, for here is the answer. Daring is the smoldering cigarette which burns the upholstery into an obscene image. Daring is the unnecessary jump which makes an ordinary football pass result in lasting injury. Daring is the extra scotch before racing an alligator. Daring is nothing and, at the same time, daring is a word made up of sounds and letters.
Daring is an art and not a science, and so you can never actually hold daring in your lean, tan hands. It is not a spool of nylon thread, like psychology, or a bunch of alfalfa, like physics. Daring is not even the series of high-pitched shrieks and whistles that is biology. Daring is something that we can only see by its effects on other people.
Daring makes young people uncomfortable and foolish, and it makes older people fanatics and labor agitators, and it makes small children into magical pickpockets.
My praise of daring may have led you to believe that I have been bribed by some agent of “Big Daring.” I haven’t, however, received any bribe from anyone besides my parents, who asked me not to call them and also to keep their names out of the paper. My enthusiasm for daring is entirely authentic.
I have loved daring for as long as I have known that it was capable of making a man drive a motorcycle over things. Cunning may be useful, but daring soars above as a wicked demon-eagle.
You may say, “This is all well and good, but how do I become daring?” This is a very difficult question, and I only answer it after having eaten like 20 fortune cookies.
Daring requires practice. You cannot expect to be daring the first time you leap through a plate glass window. Even after having taken a swan dive off of the Marcus Whitman, you may still need more practice. You have to work at it every day, or else daring will leave you in a dark, unpleasant place.
Daring is more than jumping and shouting. All daring people are pretty generally good shouters and jumpers. That’s not all you need. Fifty feet of stout cord, a barrel of denatured cod oil, a 30 mile an hour fastball…the list goes on. All these things can be found at any decent daring supply emporium or most modern research churches.
Daring is sometimes impossible. There is no daring way to fall asleep in your own bed. Falling asleep at the wheel of a semi-truck full of miniature porcelain houses is daring. Falling asleep while pledging allegiance to Great Leader is daring. Falling asleep while a judge is trying to address you is daring. But normal sleep is never daring.
Daring isn’t everything. Just because it’s illegal, or it appears to violate the principle of conservation of mass and energy, doesn’t make an act daring. In order for it to be daring, it has to offend good taste, knock over something expensive, impress a skeptical child or defeat a piece of vital legislation.
Daring is perfect. There is no room for error in daring. I hope and I pray that the few words here will make you daring. This is a dangerous hope. A foolish hope. A harmful hope. A daring hope.