Courage, Fear and Freedom

At the risk of beating a dead horse, there is another element that keeps popping up for me—courage. People say I have courage because I face my reality. I am not sure where the courage is in that. It's not life or death courage, it's just inevitable erosion. Aristotle, in the Western tradition, defined the virtue of courage as a mean between fear and confidence, pointing out that too much confidence can be mistaken for courage in the foolhardy or those rendered overconfident by a string of successes. As far as I know he did not offer any indication that someone displaying fear could be mistaken for one having courage. In fact, the way he expressed it was that avoiding fear was more important than avoiding overconfidence. The extreme that one normally seeks to avoid that true courage moves toward and faces. When it comes to courage, it heads people towards pain in some circumstances, and therefore away from what they would otherwise desire. Huh? So far, it leaves me wondering how anybody recognizes courage when they see it, except maybe facing what you fear the most.

The Tao Te Ching, on the Eastern side is less specific, but still engaging in its way. There are four characters associated with courage—"loving," "causes," "ability" and "brave.' It goes on to distinguish two forms of courage this way, "One of courage, with audacity, will die. One of courage, but gentle, spares death. From these two kinds of courage arise harm and benefit."
Now, we can add gentleness to facing fear, at least for some.

There is also a distinction between momentary courage that a soldier must have to face his fear of death in just that instant and that which must be sustained in the face of what is slowly advancing, like a rising flood, a leaking boat or a chronic condition. Both must face what they fear, but the soldier must have audacity, more so than gentleness. There is also physical courage and moral courage. Physical courage is held in the face of pain, hardship, death or fear of death. Moral courage is to persist in doing the right thing in the face of public opposition or shame. But neither addresses that momentary aspect, and we are still left with that "gentleness" issue to contemplate.

You told me once that freedom sometimes evoked fear, just an undefined fear, similar in some ways to the realization that death is an inevitable fact of the human condition. Our reaction to that fear can and must only be to make certain the way we are living is enough. Are we now living as if we know we don't have unlimited days yet to live. Whether our fear has been narrowed to a specific threat or arises simply from a sense of our own mortality, doing enough for the others in our lives, being enough for those others, loving them enough all show up at once. We have freedom to thank for that. We can choose to be and do enough or not. The daily measure of this "enoughness" (your term) is a measure of a kind of courage, too. Everyone's courage in the face of impermanence is a measure of his or her virtue. I think gentleness can fit there, too.