Courage Is Calling: Fortune Favors the Brave (The Stoic Virtues Series)

In the ancient world, virtue was comprised of four key components. Courage. Temperance. Justice. Wisdom.

Parents who took her ambition as an indictment of their own lack of ambition.

Sometimes people can be bold and fearless in one part of their life and exhibit extreme (usually moral) cowardice in another. Because people compartmentalize. Because we rationalize.

“What cowardice fears most of all,” Søren Kierkegaard said, “is the making of a resolution, for a resolution instantly dissipates the mist.”

By definition, each of us is original. Our DNA has never existed before on this planet. No one has ever had our unique set of experiences. Yet what do we do with this heritage? We push it away. We choose not to be ourselves. We choose to go along, to not raise any eyebrows.

Scholars remind us that the opposite of andreia—the ancient Greek word for “courage”—is not cowardice. It’s melancholia. Courage is honest commitment to noble ideals. The opposite of courage is not, as some argue, being afraid. It’s apathy. It’s disenchantment. It’s despair. It’s throwing up your hands and saying, “What’s the point anyway?”

It’s ironic, the Stoics would say, that for all our selfish cares about ourselves, we seem to value other people’s opinions about us more than our own. The freed slave Epictetus says, “If you wish to improve, be content to appear clueless or stupid.” Can you do that? You’ll have to.

This is how it goes, whether you’re a billionaire or an ordinary person, no matter how physically tough or brilliant you are. Fear determines what is or isn’t possible.

The opposite of courage is not, as some argue, being afraid. It’s apathy. It’s disenchantment. It’s despair. It’s throwing up your hands and saying, “What’s the point anyway?”