The Path from Cowardice to Courage
Courage and cowardice seem to be complete opposites, don’t they? One is the stalwart soldier standing against an enemy. The other is a yellow-bellied chicken, running away, saving their own hide. One is good, one is bad. One gets praised, and the other condemned. In social media, we often see conflicts when for example, someone coming out as gay/bisexual/trans is applauded as brave. Some will then argue that those people aren’t brave compared to police and firefighters. What society considers to be courageous seems to be nebulous, ill-defined. But nevertheless, society has very strong reactions to what they consider brave or cowardly. And so, it seems overwhelming to acknowledge our own fears, let alone face them. And that’s normal. There is nearly always some kind of societal stigma associated with admitting fear or vulnerability, of being a “coward”. From the miserable depths our own anxiety cave, we accept the label of “coward” from others and look out longingly at all the brave people who don’t have our fears. They must be strong whereas we are weak. But if we go straight to the dictionary definition, we’ll see that courage is strength in the face of fear or grief, or facing one’s fears. So really, courage is what YOU make it, and not what others ascribe to you. We have the power to acknowledge our own fears and so, to face them courageously, or deny them in cowardice.
Is it such a long way to leap from cowardice to courage?
In his work “The Book”, Alan Watts spoke about the “game of black and white” - the illusion of opposites. In a nutshell, he suggests that two opposing states (life/death, good/evil, up/down, etc.) are not separate, but two point along a single spectrum. If we look at courage and cowardice in this respect, as one and the same state of being, it doesn’t seem like such a distance. Rather than a chasm to leap, it’s a path to walk. It might be a single step, it might be a thousand, but it’s an uninterrupted road from one to the other. Our Maxims say that a Jedi “puts aside fear, regret, and uncertainty yet knows the difference between courage and sheer stupidity” and that they must learn to “let go of their fears through their faith in the Force and has no shame in admitting their shortfalls when they occur.” Our duty is to master our own fears, not dwell on them (or dwell on the fears of others!). We move forwards along the path from cowardice to courage, one step at a time, guided and bolstered by the Force. We stumble or are dragged backwards by circumstance, but we move ever forwards.
We are brave.
We are Jedi.
