TL;DR
What is Courage?
Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the ability to act in the face of fear.
It’s taking risks under your own name, with high accountability.
“An honest man has nothing to fear”, so why should honest men be courageous?
In one sentence: It takes courage to ACT truth even when you know it will cost you pain today.
It takes humility to pursue truth. It takes courage to act out truth. The price of truth is ego; honest truth will ruthlessly show you who you really are. People seeking to protect their own egos in the face of a living and acting truth will do everything they can fight it.
- Facing Consequences: Being honest can sometimes lead to unintended, negative consequences, such as criticism, judgment, or even backlash from others. In such situations, it takes courage to uphold one’s honesty and integrity, despite the potential risks or hardships involved
- Speaking Uncomfortable Truths: Honesty may require individuals to speak uncomfortable or unpopular truths that others may not want to hear. It takes courage to navigate these situations, as there can be resistance, conflict, or discomfort in sharing certain truths. You may often find that speaking truth leads to an isolated road; as we know form Rollo May’s work from “Man’s search for meaning”, most people’s reaction to isolation is to seek other people. It takes courage to resist the reaction of conformity in the persistence of truth.
- Challenging Injustice or Corruption: An honest person may encounter situations where they need to stand up against injustice, corruption, or unethical practices. This often requires courage, as it can involve risks, potential harm, or going against powerful individuals or systems.
The above image is Elon Musk, having the courage to continue space exploration, despite his childhood hero condemning his efforts. It takes COURAGE to stand for what you believe rather than fold in because of the opinions of people you value.
Courage, From Rollo May
Courage is the capacity to meet the anxiety which arises as one achieves freedom borne from the actualization of one’s own nature.
It is the willingness to differentiate, to move from the protecting realms of parental dependance to new levels of freedom and integration; the power to let go of the familiar and the secure.
Courage is found in the small, iterative, hour-to-hour decisions which place the bricks in the structure of his building of himself into a person who acts with freedom and responsibility.
The hardest step in developing courage is accepting full responsibility for one’s own standards and judgments, even though his wisdom is both limited and imperfect; for it is the courage to be and trust one’s self despite the fact that one is finite; it means acting, loving, thinking, creating, even though one knows he does not have the final answers, and he may very well be wrong!
The opposite of courage is conformity
People lack courage because of their fear of being alone, isolated, or being subject to “social isolation” as an outcast.
Vanity and narcissism are the enemies of courage.
Courage arises from one’s sense of dignity and self-esteem; one is uncourageous if he thinks poorly of himself.
The hallmark of courage in our age of conformity is the capacity to stand on one’s own convictions for no other motive other than simply because these are what one truly believes. Courage is therefore an affirmative choice of “this is my self, my being” rather than a choice of “I can do no other” (if one cannot do any other, that is he is limited in his options of actions, then what courage is involved?)
Whom am I speaking to? Who is this going to help?
The guy who is starting to seek truth, but is not yet seeing any significant changes in his life. He reads and thinks all day, and may even speak truth at times, but he lack the COURAGE to take action that aligns with truth in a way that will massively change his life.