Courage

by Susan Cameron

I had a friend who did a tour of duty in Vietnam. He came home with only one functioning eyeball and over a dozen medals testifying to his courage. He thought the medals were incredibly funny. "We were on patrol and got ambushed. Shrapnel hit me in the eye, but I kept shooting. What else was I going to do? Of course I kept shooting! When it was all over and I was about to leave the hospital, there was a big ceremony, and I had all these medals pinned to my chest. Hey, a bunch of guys were shooting at me, and I shot back. What choice did I really have? Is that courage?"

I think my friend was excessively modest, but I understood his point. To say that he acted courageously implies that he had a choice to act cowardly; since acting cowardly would have resulted in his death, acting courageously required no conscious choice at all. My friend was amused by the bits of metal and ribbon his country gave him for his bravery, but at least America acknowledged his suffering and his sacrifice. Most people who perform acts of courage remain anonymous and unrewarded.

For example, look at the business executive hauling his briefcase into a conference room full of hostile faces, about to give a presentation that will decide his career's future. Walking into that room takes courage. He is as fearful as a grunt humping through the boonies cradling an M-16 in his arms, wondering if he's going to be ambushed today. If the businessman does well, he may get a raise or a promotion, but nobody will praise him for his guts. Look at the laborer working in the hot sun and cold wind, enduring the daily grind so he can put food in his children's stomachs and keep a roof over their heads -- no medals, no glory, but doesn't he have courage? Isn't a man who endures the hardships of the workplace year after year for his family's sake as brave as a man who faces bullets once in his life for his country's sake?

There are no medals for courageous neighbors who band together to fight crime rather than put up "For Sale" signs, or for whistleblowers who risk their jobs or even their lives when they expose their employers as polluters or crooks. There are no congratulatory ceremonies for brave women who slap their bosses, or sue them, rather than tolerate sexual harassment. Fifty years ago, white southerners who courageously defied their community's standards and fought for civil rights for blacks were ostracized, harassed, or murdered, not lauded in speeches; today, black children in America's ghettos who dare to attend school, study and get good grades in defiance of their community's standards often meet the same fate. Examples of courage are all around us, if we stop and look.

Leo Tolstoy said, "Any idiot can face a crisis. It's this day-to-day living that wears you down." Everyday life can require more courage, tenacity and resolution than warfare on a battlefield. Courage is the will to endure, whether the extraordinary hardships of war or the mundane hardships of ordinary life. Courage is choosing to do the right thing even when it's easier or safer to do the wrong thing.

Robert Louis Stevenson summed it up: "The world has no room for cowards. We must all be ready somehow to toil, to suffer, to die. And yours is not the less noble because no drum beats before you when you go out into your daily battlefields, and no crowds shout about your coming when you return from your daily victory or defeat."

copyright 1993, Susan Cameron