Precisely the kind of thing I think about at three in the morning when I should be sleeping, so I thought I'd add my own take on courage.
For one thing, courage is very subjective. What is courageous for one person is fairly passe for someone else. I'll use a few examples from my own past of things people have called 'courageous' but I've called other things.
Example 1-- I once drove through a tornado. Literally. Right through the vortex. Was that 'brave'? No. I didn't see the stupid thing until it caught my car and whipped me across the road. I merely didn't panic (largely because there wasn't time). I held onto the wheel and held my breath. There was no courage to it, just a matter of not losing my head. Lack of panic does not equal courage. For another thing, I'm not precisely afraid of tornadoes, being as I've grown up in Texas and they're a part of life. I have a healthy respect for them, yes, but when the tornado warning sirens start going off, I'm not heading for shelter. I'm one of the idiots who is either ignoring the sirens, or standing in the back yard watching the funnel cloud. That makes me an idiot, which is not courageous. To me, courage involves purposely facing something you fear.
Another example, when I was in college, I worked as a supervisor in retail, and we had an angry customer who started throwing a swearing fit at one of the cashiers. I told him off and ordered him out of the store, and afterwards, I had half a dozen people tell me how 'brave' that was. No, it was careless. He pissed me off, so I yelled back, and that is not courage. THat's stupidity, especially in a state that allows people to carry concealed weapons. Courage implies forethought, in my opinion.
I could go on about things I've done that people say I'm 'brave' for, but generally, I'd say that I'm not being 'brave', I'm being stupid, level headed or not thinking.
Courage is not the absent of fear, and it is not something that happens because you're too stupid to realize that you should be afraid. Courage is facing something that you fear, with the full knowledge of what you are doing, when you have the choice of whether or not to do it. Most acts of true courage go unnoticed.
I have a coworker who had to have major surgery on her shoulder a few years ago. She didn't have a choice, it was necessary because she was in a bad wreck. She didn't know what she was getting into. She didn't know how bad the therapy was going to be. It took no courage, because there was no option and she went in blindly. Then last year, she began having problems with her other shoulder, and after some x-rays, the doctors recommended the same surgery again. This time she *did* know what she was getting into, and it was elective, and she knew how long the recovery period would be (18 months later she's still not fully operational). The second surgery took courage because she had a choice, she knew how bad it would be and it terrified her. To me, that is the sort of thing that takes courage.
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Precisely the kind of thing I think about at three in the morning when I should be sleeping, so I thought I'd add my own take on courage.
For one thing, courage is very subjective. What is courageous for one person is fairly passe for someone else. I'll use a few examples from my own past of things people have called 'courageous' but I've called other things.
Example 1-- I once drove through a tornado. Literally. Right through the vortex. Was that 'brave'? No. I didn't see the stupid thing until it caught my car and whipped me across the road. I merely didn't panic (largely because there wasn't time). I held onto the wheel and held my breath. There was no courage to it, just a matter of not losing my head. Lack of panic does not equal courage. For another thing, I'm not precisely afraid of tornadoes, being as I've grown up in Texas and they're a part of life. I have a healthy respect for them, yes, but when the tornado warning sirens start going off, I'm not heading for shelter. I'm one of the idiots who is either ignoring the sirens, or standing in the back yard watching the funnel cloud. That makes me an idiot, which is not courageous. To me, courage involves purposely facing something you fear.
Another example, when I was in college, I worked as a supervisor in retail, and we had an angry customer who started throwing a swearing fit at one of the cashiers. I told him off and ordered him out of the store, and afterwards, I had half a dozen people tell me how 'brave' that was. No, it was careless. He pissed me off, so I yelled back, and that is not courage. THat's stupidity, especially in a state that allows people to carry concealed weapons. Courage implies forethought, in my opinion.
I could go on about things I've done that people say I'm 'brave' for, but generally, I'd say that I'm not being 'brave', I'm being stupid, level headed or not thinking.
Courage is not the absent of fear, and it is not something that happens because you're too stupid to realize that you should be afraid. Courage is facing something that you fear, with the full knowledge of what you are doing, when you have the choice of whether or not to do it. Most acts of true courage go unnoticed.
I have a coworker who had to have major surgery on her shoulder a few years ago. She didn't have a choice, it was necessary because she was in a bad wreck. She didn't know what she was getting into. She didn't know how bad the therapy was going to be. It took no courage, because there was no option and she went in blindly. Then last year, she began having problems with her other shoulder, and after some x-rays, the doctors recommended the same surgery again. This time she *did* know what she was getting into, and it was elective, and she knew how long the recovery period would be (18 months later she's still not fully operational). The second surgery took courage because she had a choice, she knew how bad it would be and it terrified her. To me, that is the sort of thing that takes courage.