Twentieth

Courage. It’s what drives us to perform acts and duties that may not otherwise come to a person’s intuition or average thinking. It is not something that comes in equal portions for each individual. Some possess a lot, while others claim not to have much, but mostly it seems to come with each situation one comes to face. This is all for the average person; there are individuals that require more courage because of the duties needed for them to perform. Firefighters, police officers, and military officers are the first and foremost that come to mind for courageous careers because of the obvious dangers involved in such careers.
Other careers that might not require as much courage but still more than the average person might be surgeons (and the like), teachers, defense lawyers, post officers, door-to-door salesmen, and coaches for most sports. I suppose that there are others that need courage of some sort, and maybe some of the careers I listed depend on the neighborhood, city, culture, or country one finds oneself in but they all seem to be careers that a lot of people don’t often feel comfortable going out and doing on a regular basis, and so I gave it to the attribution of courage in these people to perform their duties.

Any job that requires public speaking would also require courage because the average person (as Jerry Seinfeld so put it) would prefer being in the coffin than to give the eulogy. I think perhaps the attribution of courage would also differ from person to person depending on the upbringing of the individual. In that, there are many different elements that affect the individual’s upbringing and their amount of courage, or at what age the person finds their courage and how often they have had to call upon it.

To the average individual courage is summoned up in the small things first, it is a development. Overcoming a fear of the dark, animals, strangers, being alone, confined spaces, etc… As a kid then, courage in the individual is most often brought upon through osmosis from parent to kid. It is then important how the parent reacts to the kid and the situation; that the parent treats their kid with respect and allows the kid to face their fears in equal measures of on their own and with the help of the parent, so that courage in the kid grows in a way that they will be able to face bigger fears on a gradual basis. In other words, as the kids grow, so should their courage. The same should be said for other attributes such as love, joy, discipline, patience and so on.

Where am I going with this? What brought it on? The second question is easiest to answer and can be used for most of my works. The way I write, whether it is a poem, story, haiku, this blog, or even an essay, is that I follow the first thought or word that comes to my head and go with it. The answer to the first question is that we don’t often think about courage, yet it comes to us as if on instinct. Not quite instinct because it is more of a choice and a discipline in most situations in the everyday life. In the emergencies or unexpected events that life brings, courage is, ironically, more brought on because of fear. Some people have said that it is fear that drove an individual on to perform such a duty, but I feel it is more that fear sparks courage, but only when the individual chooses to perform a “heroic” duty. Otherwise it is just acting out of fearful instinct. The line between the two might be thin, but really anyone can have the chance to be heroic. It is all a matter of saying “yes” or “no” to the right questions.