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

by Ryan Holiday

Each one of us has the means to assert our agency. It begins with a choice, but it is ensured by action. Few men of accomplishment, da Vinci noted, got there by things happening to them. No, he said, they are what has happened. So which will you be? The immovable object or the unstoppable force? The leader or the follower? The passive acceptance or the active resistance? You have to believe you can make a difference. You have to try to make one. Because this too is an effective truth. The unreasonable person is the one who changes the world. The one who believes they can decide the end of the story, that’s the one who at least has a chance of writing some history.

what he pulled off was something few could have managed and all were afraid to try. He did something no one thought was possible. He found agency where others saw nothing but impossibility. Instead of being someone whom events happened to, he made events. He did what he wanted, what he felt was necessary, what he felt made the world a freer, safer place.

Even Gandhi, a man of incredible gentleness and restraint, knew there was a line that must sometimes be crossed. “Where there is only a choice between cowardice and violence,” he said, “I would advise violence.”

No one should seek out situations like these, but you should know that you may find yourself in one. And it will be then that you’ll understand the truth of the expression popular with self-defense instructors: Violence is rarely the answer—but when it is, it’s the only answer.

no species survives long without a will to protect itself. Without bravery, without the warrior ethos, no one—and no nation—survives long enough. There are plenty of brave pacifists out there, but even they understand at some level that their idealism is feasible only because others are willing to be pragmatic in their place. Sometimes physical courage is required to protect moral courage. There will be moments when we are at risk—or someone we love is at risk. Kind words will not cut it. Poise will not protect us. What will be called for is intensity, aggression, a demonstration of force. In these moments, we cannot shy away. We cannot shrink. We cannot be bullied. We cannot do nothing. In those moments, we’ll have to hit back, and we’ll have to hit hard. We must raise our fists. We must make our stand. Lest we end up on our knees.

To leave your home, to leave what you know, to risk it all for the hope—usually a dismal, naïve, projected hope—for a better life? To cross oceans and deserts, to brave gunfire, prejudice, walls, and uncertainty? It may well be the most courageous thing a human being can do. It is a beautiful, inspiring thing.

The boldness, the gamble, the sheer tenacity and determination? They might not be the most educated, they might not be the most wealthy, some of them might well be leaving mistakes and failures behind them, but immigrants are by definition exhibiting a virtue we all admire. Tired? Meek? These are indefatigable warriors. They are the descendants of pioneers and explorers. Where would we be without this kind of courage? Who would not want it infused into their economy and culture? Who can’t learn something from this in our own cushier, safer lives?

Sometimes it’s the courage to quit a job that’s become a dead end. Sometimes it’s calling it on a project that we’ve sunk our whole life and life’s savings into. Or it’s walking away from a political party. It’s deciding to divorce after many unhappy years together. We did our best. We struggled. We fought, bravely, intensely. It didn’t work. Some people use the fact that things are bad as an excuse. Some people use their surroundings as a reason to despair. Some people think a lack of opportunity is a problem that resolves itself. Other people get up and do something about it. Which one are you?

Socrates asks for a definition of courage. The answer he gets is a good one: “Courage is a sort of endurance of the soul.”

Leaving is scary. The end of something can feel like a kind of dying. Somewhere or something new means uncertainty. It is risky. It is painful. It requires hard decisions. No one can promise you that the next place, the next try will go better. But it’s pretty certain that continuing to do the same thing in the same way in the same place over and over is not just insanity, but eventually a form of cowardice.

what counts is that they’re doing something. They are controlling what happens to them, not the other way around. They are making a big bet. One that takes real cojones. Knowing what it takes to leap ourselves, we ought to admire it when we see it in others. We should let it inspire us too—no situation is hopeless, we’re never without agency. We can always bravely pack up and move.

Do you know what happens when we avoid the hard things? When we tell ourselves it doesn’t matter? When someone fails to do their job in the moment, or kicks a tough decision upstairs or down the road? It forces someone else to do it later, at even greater cost. The history of appeasement and procrastination show us: The bill comes due eventually, with interest attached.

MacArthur, who, striding to a blackboard, wrote in French, “De Qui Objet?”—What is the object? It was to surprise the enemy. To put pressure on them. He circled the port on the map. “That’s where we should land, Inchon—go for the throat.” They shouldn’t take “counsel of their fears,” he said—it was a matter of willpower and courage. His superiors reviewed the operation. They were not impressed. “The operation is not impossible,” the vice admiral of the Navy told MacArthur, “but I do not recommend it.” This should have been discouraging. Instead, it actually excited MacArthur. They were telling him there was a chance. That’s what “not impossible” means. Whether it’s a 1 percent chance or .0001 percent, all that courage needs to hear is that there is a possibility. It’s hard? Unlikely? No matter. As it happens, the sheer improbability was why MacArthur liked his chances. “The North Koreans would regard an Inchon landing as impossible,” he said. “I could take them by surprise.” High, but not insuperable, hurdles are the perfect opportunity for the brave to win stunning victories.

He had remembered his father’s words: “Doug, councils of war breed timidity and defeatism.”

“I can almost hear the ticking of the second hand of destiny,” he said. “We must act now or we will die . . . Inchon will succeed. And it will save a hundred thousand lives.”

we only did what we were sure of, if we only proceeded when things were favorable, then history would never be made. The averages have been against everything that ever happened—that’s why we call it the mean. We have to remember that these polls, these estimations, these statistical models—these things are static. What they cannot predict for, what they cannot account for, is the individual with agency, the human being who makes events happen rather than simply sitting back and waiting for things to happen to them.

It takes courage to look at the averages and say, “I am not average.” To say, “Somebody will be the exception and it may as well be me.” That’s what courage is. In fact, there is no courage without bad odds, without a willingness to risk losing—the job, the game, the deal, your life. If it was a sure thing, what would be brave about it?

You’re going to let the fact that unhindered success is rare deter you? You’re going to let the mean tell you what you can and can’t do? You’re going to let them wear you down and convince you to play it safe? Or not at all? That’s not a recipe for living, for greatness, for goodness.

Still, there is no escaping: Sometimes we must be brave enough to defy the odds, but we do this only when there is a real chance of success. And we do it rarely, when we have no other choice.

As Longfellow wrote: Lives of great men all remind us We can make our lives sublime, And, departing, leave behind us Footprints on the sands of time.

When Apple had drifted from its innovative and rebellious roots, this was a tactic Steve Jobs used to bring the company back on track. “One way to remember who you are,” he said, “is to remember who your heroes are.”

When We Rise Above Ourselves . . . Man is pushed by drives. But he is pulled by values. Viktor Frankl

If there is a certain unreasonableness to courage, there is something even harder to explain. Altruism. Selflessness. Indeed, evolutionary psychologists, biologists, and dramatists alike have struggled to make sense of it for years. “Human folly,” the historian T. R. Fehrenbach observed, “is easier to explain than human valor.”