Twenty Seconds

We Bought A Zoo has this famous-ish scene where Benjamin Me is talking to his son Dylan and tells him – in the unbashedly inspiring Matt Damon way – sometimes all you need is tw

enty seconds of insane courage, of embarrassing bravery. And I thought that’s what I wanted to write about, it felt hopeful, inspiring, and something worth writing about. But I kept getting stuck on the twenty first second. What happens after those twenty seconds when you have to deal with the consequences of whatever decision(s) you made.

What’s implied in the scene, at least what I took from my watching was those twenty seconds were an opportunity to say yes, saying yes to something you’d normally be too afraid to. And that’s all great, truly. However, I think the real courage is in the no. Dylan screams, teary eyed, exhausted by grief and change, “it’s your dream, you can’t force a dream onto someone else, Dad.”. What a universal truth that is. Whether it be your parents who want you to go to their Alma Mater, play a sport you’re good at but don’t enjoy, or even going into a profession because your guidance councillor is telling you to. Saying no to them, to the life that comes with that decision requires twenty seconds of insane courage. That’s not to say they’re wrong, as Dylan’s dad answers “it’s a good dream” which is true. Living and renovating a zoo with a group of hodge-podge characters sounds like a fantasy, one of the many rotting figs from my version of Sylvia Plath’s fig tree. But there are other dreams, and they’re allowed to not be the same as those around you.

What they don’t tell us is sometimes the no is scarier than the yes. But i’ll tell you what got me to saying ‘no’, and that was this piece of advice, to never make a decision out of fear. Don’t say yes to something you don’t want because you can’t muster twenty seconds of insane courage to say no. What they don’t tell you is your dream may not look like everybody else’s, but that doesn’t mean it’s not a good dream.