THE PRACTICE of all virtues requires courage. Courage is needed because what is wrong is easier to do than what is right.
The wrong is usually easy and the right is usually hard. It is easy to acquire vices for example because vices involve pleasure such as drugs, alcohol and gambling. But it also gives you the most misery later on. Virtues are harder to do because it requires effort such as the virtue of hard work, humility, honesty, generosity, etc. But virtue also gives you enduring happiness and satisfaction.It
takes courage to be humble because the world is racing towards pride and
honor. It takes courage to be honest because cheating, stealing, graft and
corruption is rampant. It takes courage to be sincere and truthful because
fake news is proliferating. It takes courage to be patient because the
world is craving for instant gratification.
Courage
is not the same as fearlessness. Fearlessness tends to be defined as
not feeling any fear at all. But courage is not the absence of
fear but the control of it. It’s not the absence of fear in trying
to do the right thing or achieving our goals in life but overcoming fear and
not letting it hinder us in taking action. It is “grace under
pressure”, as Ernest Hemingway would say. “It is fear that has said
its prayers”, according to Donald DeMarco, the author of the book, “The Heart
of Virtue.”
Aviatrix
Amelia Earhart remarked that without courage, personal contentment is not
possible. I totally agree with her because personal contentment is tied up to
achieving our goals. And having goals in life and trying to reach them is
what makes life exciting.
Courage
is the middle virtue between two vices of cowardice and recklessness. Cowardice
and recklessness are the two contrary vices to courage. Cowardice is
giving in to one’s fears and recklessness is courage misplaced or courage
without much reflection or prudence.
We
tend to think of courage in militaristic terms as a heroic response against
fearsome and life-threatening enemies. That of course is perhaps the
highest form of courage but the enemies of our daily lives are hardly
life-threatening but oftentimes moral-threatening. It is rather the
courage of fulfilling our daily duties by the role we have assumed in life as a
student, worker or parent. It is overcoming laziness, dishonesty, laxity and
impatience in our everyday chores.
US
President John F. Kennedy said, “To be courageous, requires no exceptional
qualifications, no magic formula, and no special combination of time, place and
circumstance.” It is to resist the temptation to sacrifice our integrity
for instance, for a promise of an easier life. I am referring to graft
and corruption that is practiced everywhere. Courage is also to say no to
the fleeting pleasures of vices and addiction that destroys both body and soul.
In
terms of reaching our goals or growing in character, fear is what hinders us
from reaching our potential. Stan Beecham says “We ought to make the
conquest of fear one of the primary goals in life.” Another term for
fear in this context is being afraid of going out of our comfort
zone. When we have the chance to learn more by going to school,
become more financially stable by putting up a business, live a happier life by
breaking up a bad relationship, and don’t do it, it is because we want to stay
in our comfort zone. But the comfort zone is also the dead zone
because there is no growth there.
The solution is to pray to God for courage because growth is
only found outside of the comfort zone. Courage is always ordained
towards doing good and not doing bad. Let us learn from the wise counsel of
J.W. Dawson who says, “You need not choose evil; but only to fail to choose
good, and you drift fast enough towards evil. You do not need to
say, ‘I will be bad’. You only have to say, ‘I will not choose God’s
choice’, and the choice of evil is already settled.” (Carlos Cornejo)
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