It has been quite a while since I wrote something for one of John Holton’s weekly Writer’s Workshop prompts, and it feels about time that I do it again. This week’s selection, which you can find here, includes the one I have chosen, his #1: Write a post inspired by the word courage.

Just in case you don’t know the word I looked it up, and the preferred definition I found was in the Merriam-Webster dictionary:

“mental or moral strength to venture, persevere, and withstand danger, fear, or difficulty.”

That seems to me to cover what I think it is about. At the grandest level it is usually interpreted to mean valour in battle, in times of war, but that barely scratches the surface for me. We can all do things which require a little courage or bravery in our everyday lives, and these don’t need to be things which would qualify us to be called ‘heroes,’ though we may be just that in someone’s eyes for what we do. We can all perform acts of courage, withstanding difficulty, and most of us do it without recognising that’s what we are doing, or seeking praise for doing it.

Maybe an example or two would help? I’ve never thought of myself as brave or courageous, and usually try to avoid even the smallest of arguments, but one thing I detest is bullying. When I was at school a group of boys in our year regularly bullied my friends and me while we were enjoying a game of football. One day something in me just snapped, and while one of them was near me I stuck out a leg and tackled him to the ground, even though the ball was nowhere near us. Needless to say, like all bullies he couldn’t cope with that and sought me out after school that day. We talked for a bit, he told me to do it again (as the excuse, no doubt, to beat the shit out of me) and I refused. But no more came of it, and the bullying stopped. A simple example, and no doubt you can think of many corresponding things from your own life – I use this to make the point that courage doesn’t have to be on a large scale to matter.

I’ve said before that I have two daughters of whom I am extremely proud. One of them was first violinist and leader of the local youth orchestra where we lived. I couldn’t even raise a note from any instrument, so she had already achieved much more than I could, but to take the lead on stage in front of sizeable audiences, keeping her own playing together and taking the orchestra with her, took a degree of courage that I admired greatly.

And her younger sister was a very talented tennis player, picked up by the Lawn Tennis Association for their junior programme, and she won many tournaments in the five years that she played until an injury forced a very early retirement! I watched many of her matches – the typical tennis parent keeping his fingers tightly crossed – and always admired her courage in playing the game the way she wanted to. It may not have been the Centre Court at Wimbledon but her matches were important for her, and how she managed to hit a good serve on match point I’ll never know: I’d have been a trembling wreck!

These are just three small examples of how courage can play a part in our lives. We all face things of which we can be fearful, or which are difficult, and what matters is how we take on those challenges. They may be small, or they may be huge, but we should stand up for ourselves when we have to. Those of us who are parents and grandparents know very well how much our children learn from us, how much they can be influenced by the values we instil in them by our own words and actions, and the importance of being the best version of yourself that you can be can never be understated. It takes courage to be a good role model – which is probably why so many spineless politicians fail miserably at setting an example!

I came across this lovely quotation while I was looking up the definition of courage, and thought you should see it too:

“But as long as your courage holds out you may as well go right ahead making a fool of yourself. All brave men are fools.

Robert Frost 17 Apr. 1915, in Selected Letters of Robert Frost,  1964″

How many things have resulted from someone having the courage of their convictions in the face of the “it’ll never work” brigade? No doubt there are countless inventions which have been made because someone had the courage and the strength to persevere, even if others thought of them as fools. That is the kind of courage I would like to have!

Whle I was considering writing this piece a dim and distant memory struck me: didn’t I use courage as a Tuesday Tunes theme? I looked it up, and I actually ran two posts on this in January 2024, so I thought I’d close today with a couple of the tunes, for a bit of light relief. This first one is about having the courage to do what you think is right:

And my second one is about regrets for not having been brave when that was needed, and how that can leave us feeling in some way incomplete:

For me, this is a great song and video, and it makes its point: if we don’t have the courage of our convictions, we may well end up paying a heavy price for that. And that doesn’t just apply in a war setting!

So, that’s my take on courage. It doesn’t have to mean big things being done in the greatest of public environments, it can just as easily be applied to small things we encounter in our everyday lives. Overcoming those challenges may well take a degree of bravery on our part, and we should never underestimate its importance. What we do can make a difference – for ourselves and others – and a lack of courage might stop us doing something good. Go on, try it: as Del Boy used to say, “you know it makes sense.”

See you again for Song Lyric Sunday? Hope so 👍