Courage & Fear

We admire courage.

Someone speaks up when others remain silent. Someone tells the truth knowing what it might cost. Someone stands by another person when it would be easier to walk away.

We recognize something admirable in those moments.

But what about the times we couldn’t find that courage ourselves?

What if speaking up might have cost us a friendship, a relationship, a job, or the acceptance of people we loved?

What if doing what we believed was right felt unbearable?

Sometimes we choose the path that seems less painful.

Sometimes we tell ourselves it wasn’t really our responsibility.

Sometimes we simply don’t act.

And afterward, we may wish we had.

We can admire someone else’s courage without judging the person who couldn’t find it.

We don’t know everything another person has lived through. We don’t know what that particular choice would have cost them, or what fears they were trying to overcome.

And we don’t always understand our own fears.

That doesn’t mean courage doesn’t matter. It matters enormously.

Nor does it mean that fear excuses the harm our silence or actions may cause.

It means that courage can be difficult, and that the difficulty deserves to be acknowledged.

Perhaps we can look back and ask ourselves not only what we wish we’d done, but what made doing it so hard.

And perhaps, when another moment comes, we’ll find a little more courage.