Courage

Lately, like for the past year or so, I’ve had a mild obsession with the concept of courage.

I think it’s because I sometimes feel stuck about what I’m doing. I think of a plan and then have no idea how to make it happen. All the advice out there is, “just do it” but no one really says, this is the way to do it. So I’m stuck. 

I’m not the kind of person who tries a lot of things blindly.

At the root of all fear is a thought. It isn’t the same thought for all fears. Physical fear is all about, “Oh no, this series of events is leading to death, runnnn!” Social fear says, “These people are hostile and will kill me, runnnn!” I think those are the main types of fear and they all are concerned with preservation of life. Somehow we think life is our responsibility to preserve. Yet I wonder about that.

Let’s paint an ideal picture. This is not how things are but how they ought to be. If I am unconcerned with my social preservation and focus on yours and you are doing the same for me then we are sharing the burden of living here. So the answer is not try harder on my own account but to do better on yours. I think constantly self-advocating is exhausting, I’d rather have someone advocate for me. I don’t find advocating for others to be quite so taxing. This is a sustainable model. 

In the back of our heads there’s this little worry creature that likes to remind us that other people fail. In fact it also tells us that we fail therefore others will fail. This creature is telling you facts based on experience. Facts based on experience are impossible to ignore. Nor should you ignore them. Interesting point though, you happen to be alive and somewhat rational, past failures haven’t been terminal. So, why this ginormous emotional impact, this thing that makes us skittish around the scene of our past mistakes? 

Our culture, society, has sent us messages of dire inadequacy from before our births. But am I blaming culture? I don’t know. Education is a powerful thing that works against these messages. If we cultivate the ability to analyze messages to get at the root communication then we are able to deal with the root causes of everything.

I’ll go with a perennial hot button issue to illustrate my point, gun control. Ok, so every three years or so some broken messed up man goes and shoots out a school, or mall, or whatever and there’s this huge reaction, as there should be. We have people wanting to ban all guns, we have people arguing about the guns role in the incident. They focus on the guns because really the thing that will stop these types of killings isn’t the absence of the tool but the healing of the person, and that is way out of our control.  No one can guarantee healing for another person. I’m sure in all the massacres there were signs that it was coming but the individual was too isolated for us to notice.

Now if we were conditioned to notice things could have been managed better. I’m not saying that all murder will cease, but I am saying that it would be better to heal the person before they do a mass job thus reducing the occurrence of these events, leaving society with another productive individual. This is something the government alone cannot handle. This is something that each of us must take part in.

Why can’t just the government handle this you ask? Good question. Let’s be realistic, what can the government do about your attitude? Honestly, nothing. It’s our attitudes that isolate us. See if I’m thinking, “not my problem” or “that’s not worth my attention” or “my problems are more important” I blind myself to the person falling apart next to me. People hate being outcast, ignored. It’s a biological thing.

Obviously I can’t be deeply involved in everyone’s life. That’s just impossible. I’m human. But each one of us has been “assigned” a group of people to care for, if you will. If I blind myself to my people and they fall apart I am affected, because destruction happens.

I think courage has something to do with asking for help. Not me telling you, you need help, but me asking for it even when I think you think I have it all together. It, whatever, is all scattered out there. I don't know exactly what I'm doing, I'm not sure what I need, but I do need friends. Ones who will go questing with me to find the answers.