I'm sorry you are feeling so... ah... defeated... I know something about this. I've also never really been a brave person (in any sense of the word) although I have at times been an outspoken person, which is not the same thing. (It's a long story.)

I guess I always wanted to be a brave person, & a person other people listened to, which is why I was sometimes an outspoken person... not that it ever did any good. But as I've aged I've concluded that I'd have perhaps been better off if I could have just realized I was never going to be the kind of brave, respected person I wanted to be & just found a way to live my life as the person I am.

In one of Parker J. Palmer's books, he recounts a story wherein a Jewish Rabbi says something to the effect that when he would die, God would not ask him why he was not Moses. Rather God would ask him why he (the Rabbi) why he was not himself. (I wish I could find the citation but I can't.) Anyway, the point being that we each have to strive to discern who it is we are & do what we can to be that person, not spend what time we have here on earth struggling to become someone we are not. Or as Parker Palmer has written, we have to "let our lives speak". And before we decide what we want to do with our lives, we must try to discern what it is our lives intend to do with us. Each of us has things we can do & other things we can't & never will be able to no matter how hard we try. So the "trick" is to learn to build on those "gifts" we have & not get sidetracked chasing after things we simply lack the ability to succeed at. Does that make sense?

I enjoy watching the British mysteries they show on our local public television station. One of them was a show titled: "Wallander". Wallander was a Swedish police detective. In the final show of that series, one of the characters, an older man, says of himself that he had finally reached a point in life where he realized he could only be the person he had always been. That's what I believe I have finally come to... for better or worse...