When I Think of Courage

He was the kid that everyone picked on in grade school.  He dressed funny, had shaggy hair, was socially awkward, and his smell was a weaponized friend repellant.  He tried to make fun of the way I walked once, and then I teased him till he cried.

It happened during recces in fifth grade.  A group of us were playing four-square and when I ran to get a stray ball the damage in my knees was made manifest through my gait.  In a moment I’m sure he intended to use as a way to pull his own social status from the gutter, he pointed at me, laughed, and made an attempt in humor at my expense.

But no one laughed.  Even if it had been funny none of the other kids would have laughed because snickering at his joke would have lessened their own popularity.  Yet I still felt enraged; infused with anger at the conceit with which a socially inferior child had made fun of my own obvious disabilities. So I fired back, and I kept firing my seething insults until the poor child retreated in humiliation and in tears.

The others on the playground praised my refutes with approving smiles.  With the innocence of childhood they laughed at my demeaning jokes concerning the boy's personal appearance and egged me on through my harsher criticisms of his family’s poor economic circumstances.  When my tirade of eloquent lies and half-truths concerning his shortcomings had ended I felt appeased.

I felt accomplished in the evil I had done by bullying a child, but now I don’t see why.  Now I see an episode of disgrace when my courage failed me.  I see an instance when I could have included instead of discounted; when I could have uplifted, not corrupted.

That boy and his family moved the following year and by the time I realized my cowardice concerning him it was too late to repair the damage done.  My absence of courage in this thing has haunted me since.

In this instance my courage failed me, or I failed it.  Since then and even before, a deep fascination revolving around courage and its meaning developed within me.  Many of my pondering thoughts of quiet meditation through the years have been occupied with this notion of what makes courage courage and what motivates people into courageous acts.

My well-articulated lies and disparaging observations of another boy in my grade school class reflected cowardice, not courage. But other examples from humanity show that there is true courage among people.  Courage of the quality to do what is right even at the expense of their very lives.

Like the courage of a friend of mine in later life who chose to succumb to the painful distresses of cancer for nine months so as to grant life to her yet unborn child.  She held her newborn once, and then passed away. 

Or the courage of a posthumously awarded Medal of Honor recipient in Afghanistan who chose to charge the enemy by himself so that his Special Forces team members could safely retreat from the ambush they had stumbled into.  This action caused every enemy weapon on the battlefield to be directed at him.  At the cost of his life he saved his unit. 

So what causes a mother to give her life for her child or a soldier to sacrifice mortality for his friends?  And will an honest answer to that question provide the answer to what drives real courage?  Philosophy is not my strong point, but I believe there is a fundamental difference between bravery and courage and that that core variance is love.  A brave act can arise from a multitude of motivations, but the courage to uplift, protect, enrich, and defend must all stem first from love.