Courage is found in all of the following:
- Action
- Reaction
- Resistance
Seeing as these can clearly become polar opposites, courage cannot be the only benchmark by which engagement is measured.
Courage is generally regarded as a virtue — one that we assume our ideological opponents lack.
Yet courageously holding to folly is clearly not virtue.
The only chance we have to manifest the virtue of courage is if it is internalised, not externalised.
In other words, true courage is the ability to let others continue on in our definition of wrong if we cannot form or articulate adequate reasons to correct them — or indeed, if they resist our correction.
Our courage is formed in identity; the more confidence we have in identity, the more gently we can hold our convictions.
The courage to examine and hold loosely to ideas is inherent to being a growing, changing person.
Whimsical change is not an objective virtue (shifting shadows). But then again, neither is artificial rigidity, couched in terms of “faithfulness” (stiff-necked).
When we have our anchors in the right places, we’re able to be impressively malleable, flexible and accommodating.
How do we know if we’ve put our anchors in the right places?
Once again, we need better, deeper, richer tools to understand character.
