The Texture of Borrowed Courage Part 1
The Texture of Borrowed Courage Part 1
Finding strength not in what we possess, but in what we are willing to receive.
The silence before you speak is a living thing. It has a weight and a temperature. That night, it was heavy and cold, settling on my shoulders like a damp coat. The microphone in my hand was a dense, metallic anchor, threatening to pull me down into the churning sea of indistinct faces before me. The air was thick with expectation, a scent like ozone before a storm. My heart wasn't just beating; it was a frantic, clumsy drummer, practicing a rhythm for a song I had forgotten how to sing.
They had invited me to speak about the power of storytelling. The irony was a bitter taste in my mouth. Here I was, a storyteller, with a story trapped in my throat, tangled in a net of fear. The words I had so carefully written and rehearsed over sleepless nights had evaporated under the heat of the stage lights, leaving only the ash of self-doubt. My own name, Goh Ling Yong, when announced just moments before, had felt like a borrowed suit—ill-fitting and foreign.
Who are you to stand here? the voice whispered, a familiar and unwelcome companion. Who are you to talk about strength and connection when you feel this fractured, this alone?
My hand, slick with sweat, tightened around the microphone. I was on the verge of collapsing into the silence, of letting it swallow me whole. But then, my other hand, tucked deep into my pocket, found it.
A small, smooth, unassuming stone.
It was cool to the touch, a perfect, weighted stillness in the chaos of my nervous system. It was just a simple river stone, grey and unremarkable, but its texture held the imprint of a story that was not my own. And in that moment, it was everything.
The Weight of Fear
The invitation had arrived three weeks earlier in a crisp, formal email. To speak at the National Library’s annual literary festival. My initial reaction was a bloom of warmth in my chest, a quiet pride. It felt like a validation, a sign that the thousands of hours spent wrestling with words in the quiet solitude of my room had meant something to someone other than me.
But pride is a fleeting visitor. Its shadow, fear, is a far more permanent resident.
The days that followed were a slow descent into anxiety. The blank page where my speech should have been stared back at me, mocking my inadequacy. Every sentence I wrote felt fraudulent. Every anecdote seemed trivial. The more I tried to project an image of a confident, insightful author, the more I felt like an imposter. I practiced in front of the mirror, and the reflection that looked back was a stranger with panicked eyes, mouthing hollow platitudes.
Sleep became a battlefield I consistently lost. I would lie awake, tracing the patterns of the water stains on my ceiling, my mind a relentless carousel of catastrophic what-ifs. What if I forget my words? What if they find me boring? What if my voice shakes so much I can’t be understood? What if I am not enough?
This fear wasn’t loud or dramatic. It was a quiet, corrosive thing. It lived in the hollow of my stomach and the tightness in my shoulders. It was the weight of believing I had to face this challenge alone, that vulnerability was a weakness to be hidden away, and that strength was a fortress I had to build, brick by painful brick, all by myself.
A Handful of Grace
Two days before the event, I was standing in the lift of my HDB block, the metallic scent of the enclosed space doing little to soothe my frayed nerves. I had just returned from a walk, an attempt to outrun my own thoughts that had, predictably, failed. As the doors were closing, a hand, wrinkled and gentle, stopped them.
Mdm Lee from the seventh floor shuffled in, carrying a small bag of groceries that smelled faintly of ginger and pandan. She was a woman of few words, someone I exchanged polite nods and weather-based pleasantries with. Her presence was a quiet one, like the steady hum of an old refrigerator, easily overlooked but a constant in the building’s ecosystem.
She glanced at me, her eyes, softened by a cataract haze, holding a surprising clarity. “You look like you are carrying the world,” she said, her voice raspy like dry leaves.
The directness of her observation disarmed me. I tried to manufacture a smile, but it felt like cracking plaster. "Just a bit of work stress," I mumbled.
She nodded slowly, a knowing gesture that didn't pry but simply acknowledged. We rode the rest of the way up in a comfortable silence. As I stepped out on my floor, she called my name.
"Wait."
I turned. She was fumbling in her worn handbag. After a moment, she pulled out a small, grey stone. It fit perfectly in the palm of her hand, which was a roadmap of a life lived, the skin like worn parchment over a delicate frame.
“My husband gave this to me,” she said, her gaze distant for a second. “Before my first day of work as a teacher. I was so scared. Young girl, new city, a classroom full of children I didn't know. My hands were shaking so much I couldn’t hold the chalk.”
She held the stone out to me. “He told me, ‘This stone has been in the river for a thousand years. It has been pushed and pulled by the water. It has seen storms and quiet days. It is still here. It knows how to be steady. Borrow its steadiness.’”
I looked from the stone to her face, unsure of what to say.
“This is not for being brave,” she clarified, pressing it into my palm. Its smoothness was a surprise, polished by time and water and countless touches. “Bravery is for later. This is for remembering you are not alone in your fear. Someone else has stood where you are standing. Someone else has felt their heart trying to climb out of their chest. Their strength is now a part of this stone. My husband’s. Mine. You just borrow it for a while.”
I closed my fingers around it. Its small, solid weight was an anchor. It wasn’t a solution. It wasn’t a magic charm. It was something far more profound. It was a connection. A quiet acknowledgment of a shared human experience, passed from a husband to a wife, and now from a near-stranger to me. It was permission to be vulnerable, to not have all the strength I needed contained within myself.
“Thank you,” I whispered, the words feeling utterly inadequate.
She just smiled, a small, kind crescent. “The river gives it back when you are done.”
The Still Point
Back on the stage, the silence stretched, threatening to snap. The sea of faces swam in the glare of the lights. The old, familiar fear began to creep back in, its cold tendrils wrapping around my lungs.
My fingers closed tighter around the stone in my pocket. I felt its smooth, cool surface, its unyielding density. I wasn't just holding a rock. I was holding Mdm Lee’s first day as a teacher. I was holding her husband’s love. I was holding the memory of a river that flowed long before I existed and would flow long after I was gone.
My strength didn’t have to be my own. It didn’t have to be a singular, heroic feat of will. It could be borrowed. It could be shared. It could be an inheritance of courage, passed down through a simple, tangible object.
I took a deep breath. It wasn't the confident, stage-commanding breath I had practiced, but a shaky, human one. I let it out slowly.
I leaned into the microphone.
"The silence before you speak is a living thing," I began, my voice trembling slightly on the first few words. But this time, I didn't fight the tremor. I let it be.
“We are told that courage is something we must find within ourselves,” I continued, the script I’d agonized over completely forgotten. “That it’s a fire we have to light on our own. But tonight, I want to talk about a different kind of courage. The courage that is passed from one hand to another.”
I spoke of Mdm Lee, though not by name. I spoke of the stone. I spoke of the terror of standing in front of a crowd, and the profound comfort of knowing you are not the first person to feel that way. I let the carefully constructed walls of the “Author” crumble, and I just stood there as a person, vulnerable and connected.
As I spoke, a strange thing happened. The blinding glare of the lights seemed to soften. The sea of faces resolved into individuals. I saw a young woman in the third row nod slowly. I saw an elderly man smile a tired, knowing smile. I was no longer speaking at them. We were sharing a space, a moment, a truth.
The fear hadn't vanished. It was still there, a low hum beneath the surface. But it was no longer my master. It was simply a part of the story. The stone in my pocket was no longer a borrowed object; it was a reminder. A reminder that we are all tributaries of a much larger river, drawing strength from sources we can’t always see. We are not islands. We are archipelagos, connected by the deep, invisible currents of shared experience.
And as I found my rhythm, the texture of that borrowed courage became my own.
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