The Importance Of Courage

If you would rather listen to the audio version of this blog, the link is below:

https://www.buzzsprout.com/975859/episodes/8116003#

Of all the physical challenges we pursue, the numerous therapies we attend, the personal development courses we take and the self help books we read; the one thing everyone really wants is courage.

Yet it is rarely mentioned in this way because courage is not so much to do with what we want but the character we live by. It is something that encapsulates the entirety of life.

This is why the old philosophies were so powerful because they had their aim on courage all of the time.

Why is courage so important? 

Because none of the other virtues can be accessed without courage. 

Maya Angelou describes it perfectly below: 

“Without courage we cannot practise any other virtue with consistency. We can’t be kind, true, merciful, generous or honest.”

Maya Angelou – an American poet, author, singer, memoirist, and civil rights activist.

Without courage we will always be dishonest to ourselves and those around us. Truth will be deliberately avoided.

Lack of courage stops us looking at the worst aspects of ourselves. 

You can be a high achiever yet still lack courage, integrity and honour.

It’s not enough.

The Special forces would rather take a lower performance from someone they can trust, with integrity, that understands the benefit and protection of the collective whole, than a super high performer they can’t trust.

The queue for courage is almost non existent and the air gets thin just approaching the basecamp of courage.

Easier to stay small. Or so it is thought. There are plenty in this group. They have all of the excuses, justifications and reasons to stay exactly as they are.

This is the easy option and one that the majority lean towards.

Oscar Wilde described this thinking when he said:

“ Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else’s opinions.”

Yet there’s a price to pay.

It’s huge, yet no one really talks about it. 

What are the consequences of a life without courage?

It starts with the awareness of a void that just cannot be filled with any possession, achievement, distraction or temporary pleasure.

That knowing of an untapped potential that’s been abandoned due to fear, transmutes into a steadily growing resentment, this is also accompanied by jealousy, anger and corruption.

Even some of the most financially successful people, cannot fill this void, because the proof of its existence are constantly felt within them and seen outside of them in the entirety of their lives.

If you cannot find the courage to turn towards truth, you have to turn away from it and in doing so, embrace all that is false and untrue of yourself.

The worst aspects of humanity exist there in varying degrees.

Just look on social media at the hatred and vindictiveness and you will see how those without the courage to turn into truth, corrupt their minds in order not to see that they are condemning what they live within themselves.

The quest for Courage is the quest for something within us that is incorruptible. The search for something that can never be taken from us.

So turn in and tune in. There is fear waiting. Fear as a guide and not an enemy. It will lead you to courage if you allow it. This courage elevates a character to its highest echelons. No distractions are needed. It’s never a single goal or ambition but how one walks in the world and inspires others.

Courage allows one to love fully, to be a person of integrity, to be honest and true even when everything around you is tempting you not to be.

Courage shines above the madness of crowds.

It speaks by being.

Courage results in a life of ongoing true meaning by asking the most difficult questions of oneself.

James Thurber captures this in the quote below:

‘All men should strive to learn before they die

what they are running from, and to, and why.’