On the Personal Nature of Courage

I’ve mentioned my son’s school’s Monday morning assemblies before. This year, I’ve decided that I will try to attend as many chapels as possible. This morning’s topic was courage. The presenter talked about what it means, gave some examples of courageous children, and then talked about what courage looks and sounds like. She also had one slide on what lack of courage looks like. Bravery and courage have been on my mind a lot lately so as I was driving home, I thought about what it means to be courageous.

I think bravery is a lot more personal than we make it out to be.

When I looked up courage in the dictionary it said: the ability to do something that frightens one. (Bravery, by the way, says ‘courageous behavior’). If you pay close attention to the definition, it’s explicitly personal. It’s the ability to do something that frightens you. Not the ability to do scary things. It specifically says “that frightens one.” For you to be courageous, you must be doing something that you find to be frightening.

But we don’t always speak of it in these terms. When we see someone jumping out of an airplane, we say “oh he’s so brave!” For all we know, this person jumps out of planes all the time (like an instructor or something) and to him, it’s not scary at all. In this case, he’s not practicing courage. Whereas if you take someone who’s deathly afraid of heights and they jump out of a plane, that person is clearly being brave.

The reason this distinction matters a lot is that when we’re comparing to others, we often find ourselves judging others’ bravery by our standards. So if I am scared to speak in public, someone who does that will look brave to me and I will feel less courageous by comparison. I’ll think, how come I can’t be as brave as she is? For all I know, she might not be courageous at all. Maybe public speaking isn’t frightening to her. We never even consider this probability because of our own fear of public speaking. We think everyone must share our fears.

But, of course, they don’t.

While having fears is a universal condition, each person’s fears are unique to them (of course, many people share similar fears but you can never really assume other people have the same fear you have.) So when it comes to judging ourselves and/or others it’s crucial to remember the distinction the courage is something you do when you overcome your own fears. Not universal fears. Not others’ fears. But your own.

And no matter how small or big they might be, any time you do something that frightens you, you’re practicing courage. It doesn’t have to be something that others would deem important. It’s personal to you. I am scared to drive on the freeway, so each time I do it, I am practicing courage even if it’s just another ordinary task for other people. I practice courage each time I talk to a stranger because, for me, that’s outside my comfort zone.

Sometimes, it’s as simple as wearing a specific kind of clothing. Or a new lipstick. Other times, it’s telling the truth. Speaking up. Going sky diving. Taking a trip alone. Or taking a trip with a group.

We are all different people and different things scare each of us. This is not a comparison game and there’s nothing too small or too big to practice courage around. Without knowing others’ full list of fears, there’s no way to tell how brave they really are. Instead of focusing on what others are doing, or whether I am as brave as they are, what I decided I want to do is make a list of things that scare me and try to practice a little bit of courage every day.

Just like everything else, I believe bravery takes practice. The more I use those muscles, the stronger they will be, the braver I can be.