Why Courage Matters: The Way to a Braver Life

by John McCain

We don’t have as much to fear as we had in the past. Courage may be in scarce supply, but the demand appears down as well. And we have come to grade courage on the curve.

Better to suffer for a good cause than live safely without one.

Clarke had borrowed from Goethe his life’s motto: “Do your nearest duty.”

“It is not power that corrupts but fear. Fear of losing power corrupts those who wield it and fear of the scourge of power corrupts those who are subject to it.”

Suffering is not, by itself, courage; fearing what we choose to suffer is.

dread the emptiness of a life that is unattached to noble purpose.

Pay your debts. The firefighters, police officers, and emergency workers who raced toward the danger that others fled, or tried to flee, bestowed by their sacrifice an obligation on the rest of us. The soldiers who embarked to distant, dangerous lands, to take the war to our enemies and away from us, away from our loved ones, bestowed an obligation on us. So, too, did the soldiers on Peleliu, in Korea, in Vietnam, and in all the savage battles in all the wars of our history. They are blood debts we owe. They’re not a trifling thing. They should not be memories recalled just for our entertainment or to appropriate their glory for our own conceit, like the pride we take for ourselves from the hometown team that wins a championship. But don’t think them a burden, either. Their recompense is our happiness.

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I cannot believe that freedom squandered carelessly is a means to happiness. Without that object, without the pursuit of happiness—not just pleasure, but abiding happiness born of the satisfaction that we have made the most of our opportunities, with all their attendant obligations and risks—what value is there in being free?

It’s misery enough to live with the knowledge that you are a coward. How greater must be the misery to know that you loved so little that the example of your cowardice has weakened the hearts of your children, made their courage harder to find, their love poorer, their happiness more elusive? What other success could we achieve in our lives to overcome the guilt of such a failure? Nothing, absolutely nothing, could ever matter more.

We’re all afraid of something. Some have more fears than others for reasons too various to quantify and examine. The one we must all guard against is the fear of ourselves. Don’t let the sensation of fear convince you that you’re too weak to have courage. Fear is the opportunity for courage, not proof of cowardice. No one is born a coward. We were meant to love. And we were meant to have the courage for it. So be brave. The rest is easy.