A look at The Courage to Be Yourself

From co-author of the bestselling The Courage to be Disliked comes a story to help kids build confidence and be comfortable with who they are.

Undersea Park was in a quiet spot on the edge of town. I floated through the thickets of seaweed and into the park. The place was already full of families. In among the seaweed I found a white rock that was just the right size for a seat, and I sat there and watched the children. Some kids were swinging on the swings, or scrambling up the climbing frame, or playing catch with their mums. I thought about how I had once loved doing those things too. It was hard to believe, somehow. I felt as though I had been at junior high forever.  As I sat there on the rock, my shellphone began to ring.

The call was from an unknown number, but I guessed it was probably the school. Everyone would be in class right now. After homeroom was maths. Second period was English. Maybe Finn and the others would be disappointed that they couldn’t tease me about sports day. Or maybe they had already forgotten all about it. Maybe they hadn’t even noticed I was absent.

I imagined them all sitting in class, and my chest tightened. I’d pretended to be ill plenty of times so my parents would let me stay home, but this was the first time I’d just skipped school without anyone knowing. If someone found me here, would they take me to the police? Would they call my mum and dad at work? Maybe Mum would cry. The more I thought about what might happen, the more tangled my mind became.

I lay back on top of the rock. Up above I could see the surface of the ocean, the sunlight sparkling through the water. The yelling of the children darting around the park grew fainter and fainter. Ahh, I thought, this is nice. It was so quiet, so beautiful. I wished I could stay there forever . . .

And then my shellphone rang again, interrupting my thoughts. I was still clutching it in my arm. It was the same number as before.

Leave me alone! I thought. Don’t make me go back there! I didn’t want to go to school anymore – and I didn’t want to go home, either. I just wanted to disappear . . .

‘I wonder,’ came a muffled voice from somewhere underneath me, ‘whether you wouldn’t mind getting off presently?’

I leapt up in a panic. Beneath the rock I could see two huge, goggly eyes shining out at me.

‘Oh – sorry!’ I said.

Holy mackerel! I’d got comfy here thinking I was lying on a rock, but it had turned out to be the enormous shell of a hermit crab! It was he who had spoken. He had been sitting under the shell with his legs all tucked away, but now he was unfolding them and having a good stretch.

‘So, you don’t want to go to school?’ he said.

‘What? I . . .  How did you know?’

The old hermit crab laughed. ‘Don’t fret. It’s just that I overheard you talking to yourself about your worries.’

I felt my face flush bright red. Had I been speaking out loud? I hadn’t realised. How much had he heard?

‘Oh, er . . .  sorry, Mr Hermit Crab,’ I said. ‘I promise I’ll go to school tomorrow, so please don’t tell on me . . .’

‘It’s all right, I won’t tell anyone. Anyway, you should take tomorrow off too,’ he said. ‘And the day after, if need be. You should rest for as long as you want to.’

‘I should?’ I was baffled.

‘Look over there,’ the old crab said. ‘Do you see those grown-ups sitting on the benches? The ones who’ve come here alone?’

Sure enough, on the benches around the edge of the park sat a few solitary grown-ups. They weren’t doing anything in particular – just sitting there.

‘For children, this park is an exciting place to play. But for adults it’s a quiet spot in which to find refuge,’ said the hermit crab.

‘Refuge?’

‘That’s right. Just as you came here instead of going to school, these adults have all escaped to the park to get away from the difficulties of reality.’

‘You mean, they’re skipping work?’ I said.

‘I’m sure some of them are, yes.’

‘But why? What are they doing here?’

‘They’re enjoying being on their own.’

‘Enjoying being on their own . . .?’

What was the old hermit crab talking about?

Whenever I stayed off school and ended up home alone, I got a painful prickling sensation in my chest. It was partly from the guilt of pretending to be ill so I could skip school, but I would feel lonely too, as though everyone else was going to disappear off somewhere far away and leave me behind. The same way I felt right now, in fact. I certainly didn’t believe it was something you could enjoy.

‘I hate being alone,’ I said. ‘You’re only saying that because you don’t know what it’s really like!’

‘I do know,’ he replied.

‘You do?’

‘Yes. I was all alone too, a long time ago. In fact, perhaps I’m still alone, even now. I consider myself quite well-versed in how lonesome it feels to be on one’s own –and how fortunate.’

‘What? Lonesome and fortunate?’

‘Yes. There are two types of loneliness, you see. There’s the loneliness children feel, and then there’s the loneliness adults feel. I imagine it’s that adult loneliness you’re beginning to experience now.’

There was a booming sound, and then I felt the current begin to tug at me fiercely.  The old hermit crab said nothing, just turned his gaze upwards. A shadow was spreading across the water, and the sparkling sunlight had vanished without a trace.

In the playground, mothers were hastily gathering up their children in their fins and hurrying off home.

‘Looks like there’s a big storm coming,’ he observed.

‘It does . . .’

Just then, a little jellyfish peeped out from underneath the old hermit crab’s shell.

‘Yes, you’re right. Time to go indoors,’ the hermit crab said to the jellyfish, and he began to slowly fold in his legs once more, preparing to retreat inside.

‘What? Wait, hold on a moment,’ I said.

‘You’d better hurry on home too. It’s going to be a wild one,’ said the old crab, and then he tucked his head back into his shell, leaving me with only his words.

‘Wai— Wait! Hey, Mr Hermit Crab!’

What a rude crab! Saying all that stuff and then just scuttling off into his shell like that. I knocked on the shell angrily, clunk, clunk – and then the little jellyfish poked its head out again, and lifted the shell up for me just a fraction.

‘But what about him?’ I said.

The jellyfish didn’t reply. It just beckoned me with a tentacle.

‘You want me to come in? Inside the shell?’

The jellyfish looked as though it was nodding. It was all very nice inviting me in, I thought, but surely the hermit crab’s house would be far too small for all of us. But at the jellyfish’s invitation, I floated forwards and slipped inside the shell.

‘Wow!’ I exclaimed.

I couldn’t help it. The inside of the hermit crab’s house was so huge I couldn’t even see the far wall. In the water high above, many more jellyfish swam leisurely in the gentle current, giving off a pale-blue light. How had the hermit crab created such a gigantic space inside this little shell?

‘That’s amazing! How is it possible?’ I asked, but there was no reply from the jellyfish who had ushered me inside.

‘Good gracious! I thought I heard someone coming in. It’s you.’

The hermit crab looked a lot smaller than before, now he wasn’t wearing his shell. He stood there as the little jellyfish frolicked happily round and round him.

‘Dear dear, how terribly careless of me,’ he said. ‘This jellyfish likes to have its little joke, you see. But then it’s been stuck inside this place for a long time, so perhaps it just wanted a friend. Now, what’s your name?’

‘Ockley,’ I said.

‘Ockley, eh? What a fine name. Well, you’re here now, so you might as well stay and shelter until the sea grows calm again.’

‘Hey, Mr Hermit Crab, what’s going on with this room? How come your shell looks so enormous on the inside? Do all hermit crabs have houses like this?’ I asked.

‘Oh, it doesn’t just look enormous. It really is enormous.’

‘It’s really as big as it looks?’

‘Of course! In fact, this place might be even vaster than the ocean itself,’ said the old crab.

A room vaster than the ocean? I looked around me again. Well, I couldn’t see any walls or a ceiling, and there was definitely a steady current flowing. If he had told me I was out in the sea at night-time, I probably would have believed him. But although there were hundreds of jellyfish swimming high above, I couldn’t see a single fish. There was nothing – no coral, no seaweed, no rocks. So perhaps I really was indoors.

‘You may not believe me, Ockley, but I’m sure you have a room just as large as this one.’

‘What?’ I said. ‘My room’s much smaller! My desk and my bed take up almost all of it – I hardly have space to stretch out my arms.’

‘Take a look at those,’ the hermit crab said, gazing up into the water high above. ‘See all the words swimming about up there?’

Words? I couldn’t see any words swimming about anywhere. Only the pale-blue, see-through jellyfish.

‘In actual fact,’ the crab continued, ‘this place is my house – but it’s also the inside of my head.’

Adapted extract from The Courage to Be Yourself by Fumitake Koga, translated by Cat Anderson. Available now from your bookstore of choice.

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The Courage to Be Yourself

by Fumitake Koga, translated by Cat Anderson

A self-help book for kids from the co-author of The Courage to Be Disliked, the 15-million-copy bestseller.

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