"I learned that courage was not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it. The brave man is not he who does not feel afraid, but he who conquers that fear." - Nelson Mandela. Nelson Mandela summed up courage extremely well in this quote but it made me think what do I think when I hear the word courage? Courage to me is something we use every day, it's an emotion that makes us push to go above and beyond our normal actions. Courage is used in our daily lives because it can come in large amounts like skydiving, but it can also be used in small portions like going to your first college class. One thing I deeply regret doing when I was younger, was not playing football. It wasn't that I didn't want to, but that My mom wouldn't let me. I never looked at myself being sheltered or anything because I would always be outside playing in the dirt, but one thing I was never allowed to do was play tackle football. Its not that she didn't like the game, just that she didn't want me to get "hurt" because I was smaller than the other kids. I asked to play, but after being turned down so many times, I guess I got the message and ceased to ask. By the time middle school was over, I had grown about a foot and put on a good sixty pounds, and finally I gave football a shot. Going into my freshman year of high school, I was one of the bigger kids in my grade, not meaning that I was fat, just a little more beefy than the other kids. I remember it was the first day of school and the coach approached me and asked if I was interested in playing football. Without hesitation I said yes, and when school was over, I went to my first football practice. My freshman year of football season was spent watching the games from the sidelines, except the occasional special team plays I was able to get in on. This was due to the lack of knowledge of playing football before this year. My teammates were far ahead of me, so I decided, instead of giving up, I would work ha