Choosing not to fight when you could have isn’t cowardice. It’s the harder kind of strength.

Walking away looks like losing to everyone watching, and that is the whole cost of it. Taking the fight is the easy option, because the adrenaline is already there and the crowd is on your side, while not taking it means absorbing the comments and knowing you could have. That is more difficult, not less.

Decide in advance what you will do, because the moment itself is no time to be weighing it up. Have an exit: a direction, a person, a reason to be somewhere else. And if people give you a hard time for a week, that passes, which is more than you can say for the alternatives.