“Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one’s courage.”
Anaïs Nin
photo credit © Sammie Chaffin on Unsplash
25 years ago I moved to England to study classical homoeopathy. When I was first introduced to homoeopathy during my training in complementary medicine, I experienced one of those life changing moments. It was as if several lightbulbs went on in my head; during that lecture a seed was sown in my heart. I just knew this was what I had to do. My conviction was stronger than any concerns, worries or fears. This profound inner knowing prompted me to move to a new place in a foreign country a couple of years later.
Some said it was a courageous thing to do, because I moved to a town where I didn’t know anybody, especially since I did this move ‘on my own’ with 2 young children. ‘Where do you get the courage from?’ a friend asked me and confessed that she’d love to move to Italy but didn’t have the courage to do so. I didn’t think of it in terms of courage. Moving to another country felt quite normal. But it made me think about courage, what it is, why some people have it and others don’t, and how to get it when you need it.
The Russian born novelist and philosopher Ayn Rand suggested that “it's the hardest thing in the world to do what we want. And it takes the greatest kind of courage. I mean, what we really want.”
Why is that so hard?
A Definition of Courage
“Courage is the first of human qualities because it is the quality which guarantees the others.”
Aristotle
According to the Tao Te Ching courage is derived from love. Its source is the centre of our own being, and you can feel it in your heart.
Courage – the English word comes from the French coeur, meaning heart. When we lose courage we feel dis-heartened.
The Greek philosopher Aristotle defined courage as the mean between fear and recklessness. He saw fear and recklessness as the two opposites of a scale with courage being the balancing point in the middle. This view confirms the position of courage at the centre of our being. We tend to think of courage as a state of mind opposite to fear. Aristotle’s definition doesn’t confirm this. In his understanding courage is equivalent with equanimity and inner strength. The opposite would be a state of imbalance or inner weakness.
Courage is a state of mind that gives us inner strength in the face of adversity or challenge. The better I am connected with my own innermost centre the more courage I have naturally. Courage seems to have something to do with being plugged into a central source of life energy.
Ernest Hemingway said that ‘courage is grace under pressure.’ It is a state of consciousness perceived in the presence of pressure. Courage enables us to achieve our goals against the odds, conquer internal and external enemies, follow our dreams, and live our life with integrity. It takes courage to live our truth, because our truth often meets with resistance in the world around us. And strangely enough, there is often resistance against our own truth in our inner world too.
Masculine and Feminine Courage
“A man with outward courage dares to die; a man with inner courage dares to live.”
Lao Tzu
Interestingly, Lao Tzu mentions two types of courage, an outer one and an inner one. I have come to think of these two types of courage as a masculine and a feminine approach to courage. The masculine version of courage is the outer one, which the Tao Te Ching defines as ‘courage with audacity’. The feminine version of courage is the inner one, which the Tao Te Ching describes as ‘courage with gentleness’. It states that “One of courage, with audacity, will die. One of courage, but gentle, spares death. From these two kinds of courage arise harm and benefit.”
Alan Alda, American actor, director, and author refers to a mixture of both forms of courage when he says, “Be brave enough to live life creatively. The creative is the place where no one else has ever been. You have to leave the city of your comfort and go into the wilderness of your intuition. You can’t get there by bus, only by hard work and risk and by not quite knowing what you are doing. What you’ll discover will be wonderful. What you’ll discover will be yourself.”
Both kinds of courage may be necessary and appropriate at times. Both have their advantages and drawbacks. The masculine form of courage is experienced in exceptional situations and feels more heroic. It is a proactive form that pushes our life to new heights. Disregarding all the odds, the masculine audacious form of courage can flip into recklessness. Any suicidal mission requires courage with audacity. The absence of fear generates an illusion of courage, which may not do anything to achieve the benefits mentioned by Alan Alda.
The feminine, gentle form of courage is more likely to be found in circumstances that feel normal. It is receptive to the call of the heart and allows life to pull us in the right direction. The drawback is that the point of courage itself may go unnoticed. The implication is that the inner ‘courage muscle’ doesn’t get exercised in the same way as in the active audacious form. The gentle courage can get drowned out by normality.
When I moved to England, I followed my inner calling with the gentle kind of courage. Coming from a cosmopolitan family, moving to a different country was no big deal for me. From my perspective at the time I didn’t need any courage at all, there was simply no fear in me around this issue. It wasn’t difficult to do because there was a strong resonance between the core of my being and my action. In retrospective I realise that I had a lot of courage of the gentle kind. I allowed life to pull me in the right direction and did what I had to do.
Courage is usually felt more strongly when there is fear involved around the action we are compelled to take. We become aware of courage by not having it. If there is no fear, courage becomes a matter of fact. It becomes the gentle kind of courage. It becomes interwoven with the level at which we dare to live. When we feel fear, courage is a challenge. It becomes the audacious kind of courage, the one with which we dare to die.
Where to find Courage
“Courage is found in unlikely places.”
J.R.R. Tolkien
A common assumption around courage is that it is a quality you either have or you don’t. This is not true. Everybody has courage in relation to certain circumstances, and finding more of it when you need it is a matter of practice. The masculine and the feminine kinds of courage are found in different ways, and both can make a contribution to finding your point of courage between fear and recklessness.
A couple of years ago, after committing myself to bring the Solo System* into its current form, the thought crossed my mind that I would have to create an author’s platform. This meant that I would have to have my own blog or a website, engage in social media etc. I would have to make my work known on the worldwide web. The thought of becoming a blogger was terrifying at the time! I didn’t have a clue where to start. I felt out of my depth, I didn’t want to do it. I knew in my heart that this ‘blog-thing’ was something I would probably have to do at some point, but it made feel intensely uncomfortable. How would I find the courage to become a blogger?
Courage to do a blog? With millions of bloggers online this seems like a ridiculous concept. Why would you need courage for something that is so plain, simple and normal to so many people? – What terrified me about blogging were my assumptions about what an online author’s platform required. In other words, my own concept in my head made it into this out-of-reach kind of scary beast. I assumed I had to do things I really didn’t want to do, it would distract me from my ‘real work’ etc. I found excuses after excuses…
One day something flipped the switch in my mind, and I realised that blogging is just another tool and I could use it in whatever way I wanted. I’d have to learn a few new skills, of course, but then I would have this new tool for my own creative expression. This realisation made the prospect of blogging exciting. Suddenly I felt I could do it. The fear subsided, and I entered the point of courage in my own centre.
Does it take courage to write this blog? No, not really. It feels kind of normal now. But if I did lose my centre, which can still happen now and again, I’d remind myself of the words of Mary Anne Radmacher: “Sometimes courage is the quiet voice at the end of the day saying – I will try again tomorrow.”
*The Solo System is currently under review and rewrite, to be published soon with the title ‘Synchronosophy – A Rough Guide to the Feral Side of the Mind’
I am reposting this here in response to "Where Do I Go From Here" by Senetta Diane who reminded me of the beautiful quote by Mary Anne Radmacher.
Thank you Senetta 💕🙏
In the article, the quote from Alan Alda ("Be brave enough to live life creatively. The creative is the place where no one else has ever been") struck me as vital. If this one thought was implemented more fully in our own lives (and in schools), we'd have a much less stressed and more courageously awake society.
And this article was written 10 years ago; an oldie but goldie.