Episode 1: Courage

For the first rendition of the Comrade Contrary files, (that's a great name, 'The Comrade Contrary Files")  I present to you a interpretation of a characteristic that has been spoken of for many years, yet I doubt many understand what true courage is. Please note that I do not claim to understand it, nor do I claim to be in any way courageous. Though let me start with this:

“There is a tide in the affairs of men.

Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune;

Omitted, all the voyage of their life

Is bound in shallows and in miseries.

On such a full sea are we now afloat,

And we must take the current when it serves,

Or lose our ventures.”

                                  - Brutus, Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar

This quote is the basis of my blog and yes I should have explained this in the first blog but sue me. Shakespeare is famous for his plays and ability to write about people in a way unique for his time, however don't quote me on that I am no English academic, but he was able to express events in a way that resonated with all of society. Personally I think this quote perfectly captures the way that life is.

Courage is a part of life and it can take many forms. There is the courage that is shown through a soldier who stands on the front line, ready to to be riddled with holes all for the sake of politics. There is the courage shown when a man has been sitting in a bar for hours looking at a beautiful woman, trying to muster up the nerve to buy her a drink. A school girl shows courage when she walks through the halls of her school wearing an outfit that wouldn’t be the popular kid’s idea of cool. Then there is the courage when a 9 year old boy presents his first oral presentation on how bees make honey. But then there is the courage that a 4 year old child shows when their mother turns the light off for the night and the darkness engulfs their room.

Pericles said that “others are brave out of ignorance; and , when they stop to think, they begin to fear. But the man who can most truly be accounted brave is he who best knows the meaning of what is sweet in life and of what is terrible, and then goes out undeterred to meet what is to come.”

Atticus Finch said that “courage is not a man with a gun in his hand. It’s knowing you’re licked before you begin but you begin anyway and you see it through no matter what. You rarely win, but sometimes you do.”

Churchill said that “success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts”, he also said that “courage is what it takes to stand up and speak; courage is also what it takes to sit down and listen.”

Now I understand that this 'episode' has turned to that of a philosophical nature but hear me out. I am not sure who of these men is right in assessing the true meaning of courage, somehow I think they are all right, though here I loan the words of Mark Twain, “courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear - not absence of fear”. I think that maybe Mark Twain has it right. Maybe courage is not being without fear, but rather knowing that you are scared and taking it with you, having the strength to know that you are not perfect. That you are, riddled with holes, may be rejected, that the popular kids think that your skirt is ugly, pronouncing the word wrong that your father insisted you include, and knowing that the monsters are coming to get you; yet still being able to be there and chose to take the path where you will fail. If you really fail is questionable, but maybe courage is being scared and being able to carry it with you.