COURAGE

BY DIANA MARIE

As the 6th century BCE Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu says, being loved gives you strength, but loving deeply makes you brave. He also says: ‘From caring comes courage ‘.

Courage is a universally admired virtue, and courageous individuals in all cultures have survived across time to become the heroes of subsequent generations. There is something exhilarating about courageous individuals, those who persevered against the odds and rising above fear.

Sometime in April this year during the Movement Control Order (MCO), we were in awe when the social media went viral about a man who walked from Kuala Lumpur to Ipoh after being thrown out of his quarters by his employer. With all his means of survival depleting, he decided to walk back to his home town in Kelantan. But was this courage, or was it not? To Aristotle courage was a virtue, the greatest quality of the mind. For Richard Avramenko, a political science lecturer at the University of Wisconsin, courage is the primary means by which humans raise themselves out of their individualistic, isolated and materialistic existence.

Most philosophers and psychologists agree that courage involves persistence in danger or hardship and because courage is a universally admired virtue, most would also consider it an attribute to be promoted and fostered. Stories throughout the world illustrate courageous people as those who take a moral stand and have a clear sense of purpose. Aristotle believed that an individual develops courage by doing courageous acts (Aristotle, trans. 1962), and there is current support for the suggestion that courage is a moral habit to be developed by practice (Cavanagh & Moberg, 1999). This view is compatible with Bandura’s concept of self-efficacy in which successful performances strengthen an expectation of further success (Bandura, 1977). Individuals are more likely to face a situation and attempt to cope with it if their previous experience gives them reason to believe they can meet the challenge.

For many analysts, the cultivation of courage has more to do with emotions. The list below is how psychotherapist Melanie Greenberg puts it in her useful analysis of the six main attributes of courage;

1) Feeling Fear Yet Choosing to Act Courage is about doing what you are afraid to do. There can be no courage unless you are scared. Have the courage to act instead of react.” - Oliver Wendell Holmes

2) Following Your Heart Have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.” - Steve Jobs, Stanford commencement speech, June 2005

3) Persevering in the Face of Adversity Courage doesn’t always roar. Sometimes courage is the little voice at the end of the day that says I’ll try again tomorrow. - Mary Anne Radmacher

4) Standing Up for What Is Right The greatest heroes stand because it is right to do so, not because they believe they will walk away with their lives. Such selfless courage is a victory in itself - N.D. Wilson, Dandelion Fire

5) Expanding Your Horizons; Letting Go of the Familiar Man cannot discover new oceans unless he has the courage to lose sight of the shore. - Lord Chesterfield

6) Facing Suffering with Dignity or Faith The ideal man bears the accidents of life with dignity and grace, making the best of circumstances. - Aristotle

In other words, courage reveals what we care about. It reveals that which inspires us to overcome ourselves. And it is the selfovercoming character of courage that makes it so poignant. When we are witness to real acts of courage, we know immediately what matters most fundamentally to the courageous actor – and it is not herself, not her own physical well-being.’

‘Passion is what drives us crazy, what makes us do extraordinary things, to discover, to challenge ourselves. Passion should always be the heart of courage.’ - Midori Komatsu

DIANA MARIE Diana Marie is a team member at the Leadership Institute of Sarawak Civil Service attached with Corporate Affairs who found love in reading and writing whilst discovering inspiration in Leadership that Makes a Difference.