by Ed Trainor
Courage is an attitude of facing and dealing with anything we perceive as dangerous, difficult, or painful. We talk and write very little about courage while we talk and write a lot about love. Courage, however, is a base or foundation for love.
It can take courage to love our neighbors by standing up for them when they are being mistreated. This can be because of their race, ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation, disability, or gender. It can take courage to listen to our conscience and do the right thing, particularly when those around us are not. Resisting crowd mentality or peer pressure can take guts.
It can take courage to tell the truth to a partner when you don’t know how they will respond, and it would be easier to lie. In some situations truth telling can cause us problems. A deciding factor can be how important is this issue. Does it need to be addressed?
One of the biggest challenges which requires courage is self-awareness or introspection – being honest with ourselves. To look at ourselves as we really are also means dealing with the hurts that have happened in our lives. It takes dynamic courage not only to accept our past as well as our present reality but also to confront them with another reality of our own making: to change from negative to positive. Many of us choose to bury our hurts thru alcohol, weed, over-eating or other non productive habits. We can’t change what we can’t admit or what we are running from.
When we have courage, we feel better about ourselves and love ourselves more. We become the captain of our fate, the master of our soul, and we are able to love others more as a result.
Stay strong, Ed
Ed Trainor
