Much has been written on the subject of courage. Everybody agrees it is a good thing, and those displaying it are given due praise. All armies award medals for gallantry, often posthumously.
What has never been clear is what courage actually is. You c
an, of course, recognise it. An individual is faced with a dangerous situation and dares to act to overcome it. This can be in the battlefield, during a natural catastrophe, in an accident or even in the business world. In the latter, the danger might not be life threatening and will definitely affect careers. Courage is thus associated with risk taking (not to be pushed to foolhardiness), with making difficult decisions and with accepting responsibility.
There is the notion of courage as the absence of fear. As a poet once put it, the hero dies only once, the coward dies a thousand times. The idea is that there are fortunate individuals who do not scare easily, and are therefore brave. In a sense, individuals who practice dangerous sports can be put in this category, because they perform dangerous acts “for fun”, for the adrenalin push, for the inner satisfaction of having pushed their limits … Alas, in such cases, the non-sportsman might wonder … what’s the point?
And then there is courage of a higher order, which is to overcome your fear to perform. One thing is to be brave because you do not feel fear. Quite another is to act courageously when you are scared to death. My guess is that you get more heroes in this category, because it is both human and wise to be scared. And it is more difficult to overcome your fear than not to feel fear.
In the old days, the British army had two schools for its officers, depending on which arm they were destined to. There was the Woolwich Royal Military Academy (1741-1939) for the artillery and the engineers ... these were thinking men who needed to understand mathematics and other sciences. And there was the Sandhurst Royal Military College (1801-1947) for infantry and cavalry. The skill / mind set here was quite different ... if you were supposed to charge against strong enemy positions, or hold steady in the face of 5 billion very annoyed Zulus or Afghans ... it was probably best that you did not think about things too deeply ... Both institutions were merged in 1947 into the Sandhurst Royal Military Academy, which trains officers for all arms. Presumably, technology in the battlefield now means that blind courage is not enough.
Fear is normal and must be accepted as a fact of life. Learning to overcome it is essential, but there are no recipes for this. In dangerous situations, people often act instinctively. The same person might display great courage on one occasion and break down in the next. For many, praying helps. I guess the only universal sound strategy when confronted with a challenge is to think not only what the risks are, but what the potential gains might be. A rational analysis is never a bad thing.
