Small Courage

When we picture courage, we usually imagine something loud: a soldier charging forward, a firefighter running into a burning building, a stranger leaping into a river. These moments are real, and they deserve our admiration, but they are also rare. Most of us will live our whole lives and never once be asked to perform such a feat. The danger of this dramatic picture is that it can quietly convince us that courage is not for ordinary days, that it belongs to other, braver people in other, harder situations.

Yet there is a quieter kind of courage, and it is the kind the world actually runs on. It is the courage to admit, out loud, that you were wrong. It is the courage to ask a question that might make you look foolish in front of people you want to impress, or to say no when everyone around you is saying yes.

These acts win no medals and draw no crowds, and no one will ever make a film about them. But they are practiced daily, by anyone willing to try, and over the long span of a lifetime they may shape a person far more deeply than a single dramatic moment ever could.