The Calm of Courage

  Apropos Courage.
Courage isn’t something you lie in wait for.
It’s a daily habit.
We need courage to face the day, do the simple small things, the things that seem insignificant in our lives, and yet are so important. Courage and persistence are wholly compatible. We need to persist with courageous daily action to get our lives lived.
That’s the sort of heroism I’ve witnessed over the years; not the single incident where someone commits an act of public courage and has it printed in the papers, shown on TV, spoken about on the radio.
Uh uh. What I’ve been privileged to see is the quiet private courage that deals with the problems that destroy sleep, tire the mind, devastate the emotions and break the heart. And no one knows. It’s all borne in private, sometimes desperate, loneliness of the dark early hours, allowing the imagination to flare the worst in vivid pictures, and the possible dire consequences to stand clear and inevitable. And still the spirit prevails.
That’s courage. That’s persistence.
Kipling knew about this, didn’t he?
‘If you can dream, and not make dreams your master,
If you can think, and not make thoughts your aim,
If you can deal with Triumph and Disaster,
And treat those two imposters just the same.’
Be aware.