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

by Ryan Holiday

“We should cherish the body with the greatest care,” Seneca said. Same goes for our profession, our standing, the life we have built for ourselves. “We should also be prepared, when reason, self-respect, and duty demand the sacrifice, to deliver it even to the flames.”

Taking the hit for someone, something else. That’s what heroes do. A coward thinks of themselves.

Courage forces us to ask, “If not now, when?” and “If not me, then who?” It pushes us to be bold. It also asks: What if everyone was selfish? What would things look like? It encourages us to gamble on ourselves, to carve out an unconventional path.

It takes courage to depart from the conventional path; it’s heroic when you do it for selfless reasons.

The greater the sacrifice, the greater the glory. Even if the achievements don’t seem so notable .

“In resistance against dictatorship and terror, they gave their lives for freedom, justice and humanity.”

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.

We cultivate courage so we can do important work that people are counting on.

As Martin Luther King Jr. said, “A time comes when silence is betrayal.”

“If it works, you’ll get no credit for it; if it does not, you’ll get all the blame.” In fact, that was his reward: He was yelled at first for costing Kennedy the campaign . . . and after the election results proved him right, his role was immediately forgotten. All downside, no upside . . . and yet he braved it. It’s heroic to take that bad bargain. If we don’t do the right thing, who will? And if somebody doesn’t do it, how many will suffer? We can’t keep silent. We can’t remain passive. We have to be willing to take them on. It’s the only way we can help.

There was something to that faith. When you believe in something, it makes it easier to believe in people. It’s what helps you endure the pain and the shortcomings. Besides, could anyone have scripted a more perfect detail than the fact that Hope was in fact Wilson’s middle name?

I refuse to accept that I can’t make this better. I will not stop until I create some meaning out of this suffering.

To hope is an obligation. It’s also a light. Hope is the thing with feathers, as Emily Dickinson said. It perches on our soul. It guides us through the storm. It keeps us warm. She also says it doesn’t ask anything of us. But that’s not quite right. Hope asks for courage and then some.

They can take a lot away from you, but as long as you’re alive, they can’t make you quit.

It’s from the soul that the hero draws their real power. It’s not about who has a bigger army, the better weapons, or who has the stronger case or the bigger budget. The one who won’t ever quit will be the winner, if not now, then later, if not in this life, then in the next.

Si succiderit, de genu pugnat. If his legs fail, still he fights on his knees. Still they rise, even if it’s not literally possible.

The only way to lose is to abandon your courage. Defeat is a choice. The brave never choose it.

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 Stoic heals themselves by focusing on what they can control: Their response. The repairing. The learning of the lessons. Preparing for the future. Making a difference for others. Requesting help. Changing. Sacrificing for a greater good.

That’s the question the world is asking sometimes. It knows we’re brave, so it wants to know: Death or kintsugi?

Words don’t matter. Deeds do.

As C. S. Lewis wrote, “Courage is not simply one of the virtues, but the form of every virtue at the testing point.”

courage echoes

There was sadness and fear, but there was also a surprising amount of certainty. It felt much better to leave, much better to do the hard thing, than the morally conflicted years—as interesting and at times fun as they were—had. Far more rewarding too.

Seneca himself would talk about how virtue is two parts. The study of truth, followed by conduct. If there is a third part, he said, it would be admonishment and reminders—the process of reviewing, reflecting, and creating rules based on our experiences.

Marcus Aurelius said. To give in to fear is to deny the talents and skills that got you where you are in the first place. It’s to deprive yourself of the agency you were given at birth.

Sometimes you can only understand the perils of hesitation, of not speaking truth to power, after witnessing what happens to you and others when that doesn’t happen.

Our obligation is to the truth—whether people like it or not.

hesitation ought to steel your resolve.