Matador

What do you see inside the bull?  The thousand pound beast that thunders out into the ring to meet you?  I’m sure his hide is bristly.  The stiff hairs lay cool and flat.  To an amateur, the bull’s message is always confused as assertive aggression.  It is your job to know the real difference between the two, and identify the fear.  The whole of life in the ring is based on fear.

So you tell him that you’re not afraid.  There is not but one successful school in this.  It is no art, but a quality of the heart known as courage.  Your actions don’t even matter.  One holds the sword with the intention of cutting, one enters the ring for the intention of killing.

You must be so thoroughly rid of every bit of fear in your heart that you begin to convince the bull, for nothing is more frightful to nature than the creature that courageously faces fear to the ground.  Seeing that you are not afraid arouses the bull’s own fears.

Staring down the demon’s dark eyes in its long, flat skull, you are not alone.  You have an entire audience around you.  A group that naturally excites fear in your adversary.

You are a matador, and at the moment of greatest risk to your life you plunge the sword deep into the beast’s neck.