Inside the octagon.

I'm reading a book called The Professor in the Cage. It's about a college English professor who, fed up with his stalled career, decides the best way to get himself fired is to join the MMA gym that's just opened across the street from his office, and write about hardening himself to fight inside the octagon.

The book raises a lot of intersting questions about masculinity and violence. Thematically, It also addresses the life unlived.

The author, Jonathan Gottschall, says one of his primary motivations for writing the book was to figure out if he was actually a coward. After a liftime of shying away from physical confrontation, would he panic when the cage gate was bolted shut?

I'm following Gottschall's tale with the same rapt attention of a top-tier MMA bout. Here is somebody who's not content with the live unlived. We all have our octagons. Not all of us step inside.