Heroics Department
How about a bit of Patrick O'Brian? Dr. Maturin is talking to Mr. Jagiello in this dialog from The Surgeon's Mate:
"Your agility in the upper rigging excites wonder and admiration, my dear sir; but at the same time it causes a very great uneasiness of mind, and uneasiness proportionable to the esteem in which you are held; and it would please the Captain if you would confine yourself to the lower portions, technically known as tops."
"Does he believe that I shall fall?"
"He believes that the laws of gravity bear more severely on soldiers than on seamen; and since you are a hussar, he is convinced that you will fall."
"I shall do as he wishes, of course. But he is mistaken, you know: heroes never fall. At least, not fatally."
"I was not aware that you were a hero, Mr Jagiello."
..."Of course I am a hero," he said, getting up and laughing very cheerfully. "Every man is a hero of his own tale. Surely, Dr Maturin, every man must look on himself as wiser and more intelligent and more virtuous than the rest, so how could he see himself as the villain, or even as a minor character? And you must have noticed that heroes are never beaten. They may be undone for a while, but they always do themselves up again, and marry the virtuous young gentlewoman."
Roy M. Jacobsen
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"The modern world, when it praises its little Caesars, talks of being strong and brave: but it does not seem to see the eternal paradox involved in the conjunction of these ideas. The strong cannot be brave. Only the weak can be brave; and yet again, in practice, only those who can be brave can be trusted, in time of doubt, to be strong."
Thus, what you regard as a weakness--the understanding of one's mortality--can be viewed as a source of strength.