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

by Ryan Holiday

In the ancient world, virtue was comprised of four key components. Courage. Temperance. Justice. Wisdom.

Virtue wasn’t male or female, it just was.

Doing the right thing almost always takes courage, just as discipline is impossible without the wisdom to know what is worth choosing. What good is courage if not applied to justice? What good is wisdom if it doesn’t make us more modest?

pursue just as one pursues the mastery of any profession or skill. “We become builders by building and we become harpists by playing the harp,” he writes. “Similarly, then, we become just by doing just actions, temperate by doing temperate actions, brave by doing brave actions.”

Virtue is something we do. It’s something we choose.

There is no deed in this life so impossible that you cannot do it. Your whole life should be lived as a heroic deed. Leo Tolstoy

Is that just how it goes? That things are prized because they are rare? Possibly.

Conversely, the greatest moments in human history all share one thing—whether it’s landing on the moon or civil rights, the final stand at Thermopylae or the art of the Renaissance: The bravery of ordinary men and women. People who did what needed to be done. People who said, “If not me, then who?”

There aren’t two kinds of courage. There is only one. The kind where you put your ass on the line.

Courage is risk. It is sacrifice . . . . . . commitment . . . perseverance . . . truth . . . determination.

“To each,” Winston Churchill would say, “there comes in their lifetime a special moment when they are figuratively tapped on the shoulder and offered the chance to do a very special thing, unique to them and fitted to their talents. What a tragedy if that moment finds them unprepared or unqualified for that which could have been their finest hour.”

Were there failures of courage along the way too? Mistakes made? Opportunities not taken? Undoubtedly. But let us look to the courageous moments and learn from them rather than focus on another’s flaws as a way of excusing our own.

History is written with blood, sweat, and tears, and it is etched into eternity by the quiet endurance of courageous people.

Courage calls each of us differently, at different times, in different forms. But in every case it is, as they say, coming from inside the house.

In an ugly world, courage is beautiful. It allows beautiful things to exist. Who says it has to be so rare?

Beyond this place of wrath and tears Looms but the Horror of the shade, And yet the menace of the years Finds and shall find me unafraid. William Ernest Henley

It’s impossible to beat an enemy you do not understand, and fear—in all its forms, from terror to apathy to hatred to playing it small—is the enemy of courage.

The brave are not without fear—no human is—rather, it’s their ability to rise above it and master it that makes them so remarkable.

if you have a vocation for that way of life, act up to your inspiration and you will find there is never anything unbecoming or unladylike in doing your duty for the good of others. Choose, go on with it, wherever it may lead you.”

Fear does this. It keeps us from our destiny. It holds us back. It freezes us. It gives us a million reasons why. Or why not.

“How very little can be done under the spirit of fear,” Nightingale would later write. A good chunk of the first three decades of her life had been proof. But she also knew that there had been a brief moment where she had once not been afraid. She needed to seize that power inside herself again, to break out on her own and accept the call she had been given to hear.

By now the fear was gone. In its place was steely determination.

What we are to do in this life comes from somewhere beyond us; it’s bigger than us. We are each called to be something. We are selected. We are chosen . . . but will we choose to accept this? Or will we run away?

There is nothing worth doing that is not scary. There is no one who has achieved greatness without wrestling with their own doubts, anxieties, limitations, and demons.

“Apprehension, uncertainty, waiting, expectation, fear of surprise, do a patient more harm than any exertion,” Nightingale wrote. “Remember he is face to face with his enemy all the time, internally wrestling with him, having long imaginary conversations with him.”

Fear will make itself felt. It always does. Will we let it prevent us from answering the call? Will we leave the phone ringing? Or will we inch ourselves closer and closer, as Nightingale did, steeling ourselves, preparing ourselves, until we’re ready to do what we were put here to do?

Do you know what the most repeated phrase in the Bible is? It’s “Be not afraid.” Over and over again these words appear, a warning from on high not to let phantasiai rule the day.

“Be scared. You can’t help that,” William Faulkner put it. “But don’t be afraid.” It’s an essential distinction. A scare is a temporary rush of a feeling. That can be forgiven. Fear is a state of being, and to allow it to rule is a disgrace.

In an uncertain world, in a time of vexing, complicated problems, fear is a liability. Fear holds you back.

“The world is a narrow bridge, and the important thing is not to be afraid.”

fear was a choice.

How can you love when you’re afraid?

The receiver can’t catch the football if they flinch in anticipation of the hit. The artist can’t deliver the performance if they tremble at the ready pens of the critics. The politician will rarely make the right decision if they worry about the consequences at the polls. The family will never get started if all the couple can think about is how hard it’s going to be.

The important thing is that we are not afraid.

It has been said that leaders are dealers in hope, but in a more practical sense, they are also slayers of fear.

“False Evidence Appearing Real.”

People would rather be complicit in a crime than speak up. People would rather die in a pandemic than be the only one in a mask. People would rather stay in a job they hate than explain why they quit to do something less certain. They’d rather follow a silly trend than dare question it; losing their life savings to a burst bubble is somehow less painful than seeming stupid for sitting on the sidelines while the bubble grew. They’d rather go along with something that will tarnish their legacy than raise their voice ever so slightly and risk standing alone or apart for even ten minutes.

“Let other people worry over what they will say about you,” he said. “They will say it in any case.”

And there has never, ever been a time when the average opinion of faceless, unaccountable strangers should be valued above our own considered judgment.

“There are always more of them before they are counted.” The obstacles, the enemies, the critics—they are not as numerous as you think. It’s an illusion they want you to believe.

The night is dark and full of terrors. We face many enemies in life. But you have to understand: They are not nearly as formidable as your mind makes you think.

A little awareness, a little empathy, it doesn’t make us soft. It gives us confidence.

Seneca wrote about premeditatio malorum, the deliberate meditation on the evils that we might encounter.

So by expecting, by defining, by wrestling with what can happen, we are making it less scary and less dangerous at the same time.

The only inexcusable offense for an officer is to be surprised. To say, I didn’t think that would happen.

Each of us needs to cultivate the courage to actually look at what we’re afraid of.

We need also to cultivate the courage to think about all the things that could happen, the things that are unpleasant to think about, the unusual, the unexpected, the unlikely. It’s not just a matter of reducing our anxiety about exaggerated uncertainties, it’s also about finding certainty in the unknowns—the risk factors, what goes bump in the night, the plans of the enemy, the things that can and will go wrong.

Nothing human should be foreign to us. Nothing possible should be alien.

Douglas MacArthur summed up all failures of war and life in two words: “Too late.” Too late in preparing, too late in grasping the enemy’s intentions, too late in securing allies, too late for leaders to be exchanging contact info, too late in rushing to the aid of those in need. Too late in nothing getting specific, in not counting...

A bit depressing? Perhaps. But better to be pessimistic and prepared ...