A Roaring Lion

I know, I know. Two posts in one day? However, I am currently reading The Last Lecture by Randy Pausch. Many have already heard of this as it was on YouTube and spread over emails like crazy. The big is longer than the lecture and I encourage everyone to read it. Essentially, Randy Pausch was a computer science professor Carnegie Mellon and asked to give a lecture for a series of lectures along the theme of "The Last Lecture." What made his so profound was that his, very literally, would be the last lecture he would ever deliver as he was dying from pancreatic cancer.

However, his wife did not want him to give this lecture as it was supposed to be delivered on her birthday -- the last birthday they would ever share together. And when they were discussing this issue together with a therapist they had been seeing after he had been given his diagnosis, Professor Pausch told his wife something I feel is quite profound, "An injured lion wants to know if he can still roar."

I have often wondered what it is that makes some people willing to fight and others less so. This concept fascinates me to no end and it surely exhausts Jonathan. What is it that makes some want to roar, and others want to crawl into the brush? I think Professor Pausch narrows it down in his simple explanation:

It is the desire to simply know if he can still do it or not. That's all.

Can I still roar?