Courage Comes from Faith

Someone I know was discussing with me the presence of 'courage' as a virtue in people. His view:

1. Only some people are born courageous
2. And since it is genetic, several people are not endowed with this virtue
3. Resultantly, we don't have enough__courageous__leaders to deal with a ever-changing, demanding, violent, terror-ridden and financially depressing environment

I disagreed with him. And I presented my case.

To understand courage, let us know fear first. What is fear? Lack of knowledge of the unknown is fear. You enter a dark room in a new environment (a hotel room, a friend's apartment, a restroom at a roadside joint where you have stopped by), groping for the switches. Your mind is plagued by the unknown (environment/setting) till you find the switches and a wave of light drives away the unknown__ making it suddenly known to you. You now know the layout of the room. You know where the furniture is placed and where you can find what you are looking for. Your fear has evaporated because the light in the room drove away the darkness.

Such is life too. You are moving from one dark room (event) to another. Expecting to find the switches that will bring in the light. At times when you find the switch, you are confident, bold and at peace. And people think you have guts or call you courageous. When you don't find those switches, and are groping in the dark, consumed by the lack of knowledge of what's going to come up next (the unknown), you are seen as less confident, nervous and as living in fear! Worse, you see yourself that way too!

The antidote to fear in life is faith. Faith itself is belief in something in the absence of any evidence. In any situation in life, when people tell you, leave it to God, you are actually believing in a force, a source, of whose existence there is no material evidence. As Deepak Chopra notes in his latest book 'Why is God Laughing?', in today's violent and crisis-ridden world, where everything is the anti-thesis of love and peace, God__who is supposed to be the creator of a perfect, loving and peaceful world__has a lot of proving to do that HE or SHE or IT is still effective!!!

Even so, whenever you put your faith in that Universal Switch (or Switch Operator a.k.a. God) which you cannot see, you emerge free from fear. And you start displaying a virtue that people commonly know as courage.

My submission, therefore, is: Everyone is born equal, with the same degree of courage present in them. It is our beliefs, developed over our years of living, and our experiences through them, that make us either keep the faith or lose it. If we keep the faith, we will travel through our life unfazed and peaceful. We may be bruised, may be knocked down several times, but we will exude a rare brilliance__the light illuminating our souls__and be seen as courageous. If we lose the faith, we will live in fear, miserable already with the bruises and the knocks that life has dealt us, but our plight is worsened by the darkness in our souls.

Courage then comes from faith which, in turn, comes from belief in the Universal Creator in the absence of any evidence.




Gandhi was the most successful practioner of this principle. Perhaps, his meek, 'half-naked fakir' persona and, paradoxically, his towering successes on the global political arena are better explained now?




The Learnings:
1. Move from one event in life to another, keeping the faith
2. Courage, peace and happiness will follow__whatever be the course of your life's journey!