Courage Is Calling: Fortune Favors the Brave (The Stoic Virtues Series)

by Ryan Holiday

The opposite of fear is love. Love for one another. Love for ideas. Love for your country. Love for the vulnerable and the weak. Love for the next generation. Love for all. Is that not what hits us in the solar plexus when we hear Leonidas’s final, tearful words to his wife before he leaves? “Marry a good man who will treat you well, bear him children, and live a good life.”

over it. In sports, there are two types of athletes. There are those generational talents, those feats of genetic and physical excellence who can make plays and take our breath away. Then there is another type, a little less gifted, a little less impressive to watch, but without them the game would not be possible. These are the role players, the teammates, the leaders who bind the others together and give the team the heart they need to win. John Wooden talked about how it wasn’t how tall you were but how tall you played. More impressive still is the athlete who makes the whole team taller. When we think of the Chicago Bulls, we think of Michael Jordan. We’re forgetting Bill Cartwright, the captain who was literally and figuratively the center of the team for their first three consecutive championships.

Don’t let your buddy down—that’s the basis of military courage. But a hero goes beyond that. The essence of greatness is more than talent or skill. As Jackie Robinson said, a life is meaningless except for its impact on other lives. The athlete who makes their team better? An athlete who makes the team better off the court too? The leader who gets more out of the people around them? The artist who inspires their audience? The soldier whose calm is contagious?

“Happy is the man who can make others better,” Seneca writes, “not merely when he is in their company, but even when he is in their thoughts.” Even if this kills us, even if we’re not around to enjoy the fruits of our sacrifice because it got us fired or killed or worse, it’s still worth it. Our memory lives on in the mind of the witnesses.

A hero is a person who does what needs to be done, not just for themselves but for others. That is, a hero makes their own luck—events don’t just happen to them. Shakespeare said that we meet the time as it seeks us. But we have to seek the time and the moments too. We can’t be passive. We can’t wait. We must reach out.

We will our purpose into existence. We choose to be heroes. And if we don’t, it’s on us.

the French courage that sustains them still. A leader cannot sit in some ivory tower or behind thick castle walls. They cannot protect themselves from every danger and risk while they let their followers or employees or soldiers take the brunt of what the world throws at us. No, a leader must have real skin in the game. Whether that’s putting their own money in the firm at a rock-bottom moment or riding in open-top cars, keeping the door to their office open, or sharing vulnerably what others would hide, the connection that is forged by such gestures provides far more safety than any risk avoidance can guarantee. The boss steps up to the microphones and answers every hostile question from the crowd—even the embarrassing ones about their own mistakes, taking the hit even for the stuff that wasn’t their fault. The chief can’t take up the rear, they lead the troops into battle. The parent doesn’t just tell their kid to face their fears, they have to show them what it means to do that in their own life.

You must care about the people in your care. You must put them first. You must show them with your actions. Call them to something higher.

Sometimes we are called to go. But sometimes destiny demands that we stay—that we go back willingly into the jaws, that we stay and fight. For our jobs, our cause, or our life. For our family. For our neighbors. And heroes do this at great cost to themselves.

In one of Hemingway’s most beautiful passages, he writes: If people bring so much courage to this world the world has to kill them to break them, so of course it kills them. The world breaks every one and afterward many are strong at the broken places. But those that will not break, it kills. It kills the very good and the very gentle and the very brave impartially.

The world is a cruel and harsh place. One that, for at least four and a half billion years, is undefeated. From entire species of apex predators to Hercules to Hemingway himself, it has been home to incredibly strong and powerful creatures. And where are they now? Gone. Dust. Too many of them before their time, unnecessarily so. Because they confused strength with resilience.