Art is Life is Art: Susan Reep Photo Art

Links of Courage by Larry Poncho

Courage is reckoned the greatest of all virtues; because, unless a man has that virtue,

he has no security for preserving any other.  ~Samuel Johnson

I’m exploring the topic of courage on Coach Dian’s blog challenge. Everyone has been invited to discuss in any way at all one of the twelve subjects this particular art installation addresses, plus a thirteenth added by Dian. The art installation itself is from a Burning Man festival, and asks us to what do we pledge allegiance, learning to see with new eyes and act with new vision in the web of life.

Courage encompasses so much.

For many people, seniors and those with debilitating conditions especially, courage is getting up every day, getting dressed, and meeting the day.  I feel that the day one or both of my parents doesn’t get dressed, we’ll have crossed a threshold.

Courage for people in the armed forces, both past and present, seems to me to happen as much at home as on the battlefield;  returning home and having the courage to work through issues caused by war, and then lead what passes for a normal life.  My dad fought and painted as an artist correspondent in the Fifth Army during World War II. He endured what many think is the most brutal confrontation of that war: the Battle for Monte Cassino. To come home from that, start up a life with his bride, have children, work, and do all the things that a family man would do – that, to me, is exceptional courage. Not just for Dad, but for all the servicemen and women in all conflicts and wars.

During many hisorical movements that led to social change, courage was vital.  In the United States during the civil rights era, men and women, young and old alike, risked their lives to fight for the ability to exercise their rights – rights that already were theirs in law, just not in reality.  When asked if she wasn’t worried about being killed, voting rights activist and former sharecropper Fannie Lou Hamer said she reckoned they’d been trying to kill her all her life anyway. To honor this brave woman, click here and make a donation, large or small, to the statue committee.  We building a work of art, a visual reminder of courage. Alice Walker, author of The Color Purple, donated $10,000.  The Color Purple itself is a story of courage. You can watch a 10-minute video about Fannie Lou Hamer here - my granddaughter  and a friend made it when they were in seventh grade.

Addicts, alcoholics, those who fight every day to conquer their problems show courage.  It takes tremendous strength to decide to quit an addiction, and courageous determination every day to stay clean.  Those who move forward in the face of abuse and then try to help others are courageous.

I could go on and on because courage comes in all shapes and sizes; it’s not simply saving someone from a fire, or all the “big” things we think about.  Now, I know there is nothing simple about saving someone from a fire, so don’t get that wrong.  It’s just an example.

Because for me, personally, courage can be something as small as taking hold of oneself and moving forward – something no one else ever knows about.  Personal courage. It can be saying to someone, “I’m Jewish, and I wish you wouldn’t use the expression ‘Jew them down.  It’s offensive.’ “  Which I’ve had to do.  It’s publicly sticking up for someone getting bullied at school, not worrying about retaliation or how you will look to others. It’s doing what’s right.

Maybe that’s what courage amounts to – in the macro-situations like war, rescue or defense to the micro-situations like getting up and getting dressed each day when you’re 92 and just plain tired, or standing up for others.

So that’s what I think courage is – now, how do I use it to expand my view of the world, see with new eyes, act with new vision, and pledge my allegiance to this quality? This is tricky.  I’ve always tried to exercise personal courage and in many instances have, I think, and we talked about it a lot in the leadership class I taught in 8th grade.  I’ve never had to exercise courage on a large scale, however.  Now I wonder.  When you’re young, you are ready to put yourself in harm’s way for the sake of something larger than yourself.  When you’re older and retired, you wonder if you would have the energy to do the same.  So I pledge myself to the smaller gestures – to not letting an insult or slur pass me by, to stopping at the accident or picking up a stray animal even if it’s inconvenient, giving a cordial and civil greeting to the homeless person I pass on the street, even if it seems scary.  Doing what’s right, not what’s easy.

Mark Twain had something to say about this.  Mark Twain had something to say about almost everything, all from sharply observing the world.

It is curious that physical courage should be so common in the world and moral courage so rare.  ~Mark Twain

A wonderful vision of the world, of our country, would be to see everyone doing these small things, everyday acts of personal courage, that could result in a whole new world, dare I say a brave new world.  My vision of  courage would be to know everyone is working on what I call CSI – continuous self-improvement.  From that alone, the internal courage to face yourself, like yourself while working on what you don’t like, the external small acts of courage would result.  A new  vision of the web of life would be that with enough external small acts of courage, many of the large ones wouldn’t be needed anymore.  Maybe that would be called peace, with yourself and the world, in the world.

Tomorrow: Leah’s Creative Everyday Day theme of Bliss.

Tags: Coach Dian's blog challenge, courage, fannie lou hamer, ordinary, personal courage, pledging allegiance, servicemen and women, vision

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 9th, 2010 at 7:39 PM and is filed under Essays about Life, General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.