Courage.
Merriam-Webster defines it as: Mental or moral strength to venture, persevere, and withstand danger, fear, or difficulty.
What does it mean to us today? We seem to be rather loose with the term these days. For instance, I do not consider it courage when an athlete plays injured. I also think physical courage is vastly overrated. Mental courage seems to be much rarer.
Psychologist Melanie Greenberg says there are six attributes of courage:
1. Feeling fear yet choosing to act
2. Following your heart
3. Persevering in the face of adversity
4. Standing up for what is right
5. Expanding your horizons; letting go of the familiar
6. Facing suffering with dignity or faith
Those qualities seem to markedly narrow the spectrum of people that I would call courageous. Much like myself, I’m sure most people would be able to say they possess a couple of those attributes, but fall short in their bid for all six attributes.
Take “standing up for what is right,” for instance. How many of us have seen injustice, however small you may think it is, and done absolutely nothing and said absolutely nothing? Far, far too many to count would be my guess. Whether at work, at home or just out and about, we see on a day-to-day basis people “turning a blind eye” to what is right.
And we have fantastic, well-thought-out reasons for keeping our mouths shut. Whether it’s to save our jobs, insulate our families or just not get involved because “it’s none of my business,” the reality, whether we want to admit it or not, is we are scared to possibly sacrifice what we have to make said stand. I do it, you do it and pretty much everyone does it these days.
And how about “Expanding your horizons and letting go of the familiar?” Well, as a creature of habit, I can say without any hesitation that while I really have no issues with changes at work and so forth, I do not enjoy changing my personal space. However, personally, I feel this area is the most depleted today.
It seems to be in our nature to resist change. From the times of “the world is flat” to whatever flavor-of-the-month social issue of today, we just want things to remain familiar and unchanged. Most people are so scared that something might change that they dig themselves in to the point of rigidity, a major problem today.
Next up is “Facing suffering with dignity and faith.” If anyone has ever been around me when I get a cold then I pretty much fail this one with flying colors. Clearly, I need to work on this area. The “suffer in silence” type I am not and from what I can gather, most people are in the same loud, moaning boat together. My hat’s off to all cancer survivors and those with major handicaps. I have no idea how you do it.
There are extraordinary examples of courage out there everyday. Many go unnoticed or unreported. However, it seems that “courage” has become a matter of convenience and/or liability.
Do not get me wrong. It may well be easier to make a “courageous stand” when you have nothing to lose — although isn’t having nothing a demonstration of courage in and amongst itself?
The point to all of this is to possibly shed some light on areas that we, as a society, can improve. We live in a world where money and power have not only eroded our morality, but has suppressed our ability to make the stand. We start thinking about what we will be giving up and we decide to sit back and watch the wrongful termination, the mistreatment of those less fortunate or misuse of power. This only fuels the situation.
I have always felt that standing up against the wind, so to speak, was courageous. If you look back on history, most of the truly courageous stands made by man were done in the face of the masses. It seems that “doing what is right” is often made to look like anything but the right thing or courageous thing.
At the end of the day, you have to do what is right for yourself. However, we all know when we have shied cowardly away from a situation. In your heart, you know it wasn’t right what you allowed to happen. We all do.
To those showing real courage on a daily basis, I salute you and say this: You make the world a better place.
I will leave you guys with this: A day will come when a man must choose between courage or not. We’re all the same. We are human. We do what’s right when there is no cost to it. Courage comes easy then, yet sooner or later, in everyone’s life, there comes a day when it is not easy.
That’s the day when one must choose between real courage or not.
Richard Clark is the universal desk chief of Halifax ENC; his column appears in this space every Sunday. You can reach him at 910-219-8452 or at Richard.Clark@jdnews.com.