Courage Week 1
In 2025, I will explore the four cardinal virtues from the Aristotelian, Stoic and Catholic tradition – wisdom, moderation, justice, courage – in thirteen cycles of four weeks, and share my learnings in the form of a reflective meditation.
Courage is about action. At least that was my starting point. In the same way that a good retreat – or any strategy workshop – ends with a session on next steps, I placed courage at the end of my virtue cycle, and oriented that week towards ‘doing’. Every day, I set myself the task to do one difficult thing. The label covers anything that evokes pain, resistance, or simply sat on my to-do list for a while and never got ticked off.
Lots of people I guess, myself included, would spontaneously think of courage under the guise of heroism. I watched one of the Star Trek movies as part of my work on eutopias. The Enterprise is in a difficult position. Kirk has a plan. ‘This action has 4.3% chances of success’, comments Spock. ‘It will work’, replies Kirk. He moves ahead, and it works out indeed. This kind of bold action against the odds is standard courage: uncertain results, high risk of catastrophic failure, worth a try.
This, however, was not the kind of difficult thing I found myself doing. On Tuesday, I called the Brompton bike shop to schedule a service. On Thursday, I went to the dentist for a check-up and clean. Both were inconvenient, come with a cost, and promised only vague benefits. The dentist caught minor cavities I was not aware of. She was able to fix them quickly, without anaesthetics. Pain and loss avoided, sure, but nothing like the sense of self-worth you get from an act of bravery. As for my folding bike, there’s a click when I pedal, and the seat slides down a little when I ride for a long time. I know that a service will fix those and prevent further problems. But the bill is certain, I have to get there, and I won’t get the high of a new toy.
Variation on the same pattern: one of the nagging things I’d been pushing off was a problem with my phone. For a few months, it hadn’t been charging well. A few times, I put it on charge overnight to find it almost empty the next morning. I put considerable attention to finding the right angle for the cable, and not touching it after it connected. I also knew that it was all probably just lint in the socket. Yet it took me the resolve of courage week to spend all of three minutes digging up a needle from my darning box, and fixing the problem (it was a build-up of lint). Huge relief, minimal effort, months of procrastination.
Courage has many shapes. In this first week, for me, it took the form of a fight against sloth. Refuse neglect as a default. Maintenance work is difficult. It comes at certain cost with no compelling urge. Yet so much of what we do – and don’t – falls in that category: cleaning, checking, early repairs, and the broad realm of ‘tending to’, not in hope of any great win, even major relief, but simply to slow down decay.
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Constraints are known to stimulate creativity. I have found them equally valuable to yield results. I committed to doing one difficult thing a day: that’s a constraint. On Monday, I set off to send outreach messages about this reflective project with aligned blogs and publications. I did a bunch of other things through the day, and found myself at the end of the afternoon with an evening call scheduled, and little time or energy to write those emails. Fifteen minutes before the call, what should I do? I had to book accommodation in Auckland before a March retreat. That was a task I postponed, unsure what suburb to choose, how much to spend, and whether to book a hotel or an Airbnb. It would count as difficult. In 15 minutes, I made the call. One thing done, under pressure, for very little energy.
It's 8:15pm on Friday night, after a big week. I’m home, I want to watch a movie. I also must do one difficult thing. I could clean my kitchen cupboards, but that would take a while. Or I could send a message, but the late Friday time would make it awkward. I notice baubles on the floor in a corner of the room. A few years back, I picked up a large plastic tube full of them from the bottom of our building. It’s been standing in a corner since, behind an armchair, the frozen memory of a greedy impulse. I’ve said a dozen times that I should get rid of it, but never did, in years. I spot an empty cardboard box in the recycling. Baubles fit in. Then box goes on a shelf, and the tube in the recycling. That’s not a major achievement, but the house is marginally less cluttered, and some sort of energy shifted.
Generally, we know what must be done. Yet this knowledge has limited power of its own. This is where courage and wisdom make great allies. Know your weakness, and deliberately set the conditions where you will have to do the brave thing. I discussed a version of this with a colleague on Thursday. As coaches and teachers, we know that the best results tend to come when we’re not too prepared: when we’re open and present to the situation, and respond to it in a way that’s alive. Which is scary, like every situation ripe with potential. The temptation is always to focus instead on the specific outline of our next event. Which comes at the cost of our core strength and any long-term goal. There is courage in building the habit of putting ourselves in situations where the only way to succeed is to be present and responsive to what is happening in the moment. With a positive side effect that, by doing so, we free up time to work on the long-term stuff.
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In a somewhat odd fit of intuition, I decided that a daily physical commitment for courage week would be to spend five minutes dancing, preferably in a public setting. Monday morning, I head to the Commons after breakfast with a friend, bopping through the back streets of Fitzroy to Miley Cyrus. A deep sense of physical well-being sets in as my mood lifts. On Tuesday, I twirl around the South Melbourne Commons after hours to Katy Perry (the cleaners catch a few glances). On Saturday, I dance along the top section of Fitzroy Street, no music this time, to the great embarrassment of my partner. ‘You look like you’re harassing me’, he lovingly cringes. A woman in a green top with two dogs on a leash eyes me with suspicion as I shuffle my shoulders and hips at a red light. But my mood is so high! I laugh and feel waves of affection towards the world.
Just a few minutes of dancing have made more alive, and receptive to my surroundings, with 100% strike rate. Yet since the start of the year, this is the only commitment I missed. On Thursday, I plain forgot. That most consistently joyful activity is the one I neglected.
Like moderation, courage is a mood booster. But rather than slowing down and paying close attention to the senses, it does that by overcoming resistance. I wake up with a bad case of neck pain on Sunday morning. I put my head under the cold shower. Not only does the pain dissolve, but I’m on a high. Cold water did something to my chemistry. I can feel my outlook on the world shifting along with it – at least what I sense is possible for the day. This little act of courage enables a different future. More, it’s a self-reinforcing loop: do the scary thing, and you will feel different, which will make new things possible.
Talking with an old friend, I unpacked a paradox. I was reflecting on what held me back from broader outreach. I realised that I hold a perverse version of the fear of success. If things do work out – if more people are interested in what I do – I will find myself with more work. And I don’t have a whole lot of extra capacity right now. But in this reasoning, I fail to consider one parameter: that if things work out, I might have more resources available, and more energy to do whatever comes up. Our inner world is not exclusively ruled by scarcity.
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It would be difficult to write about courage in January 2025 without mentioning bishop Budde. She stood up in the pulpit, talking truth to power. Not in the form of an accusation, not even, I believe, in a strategic attempt to change things per se. Generally, we know what the right thing is to do, but truth has no compelling force of its own. Yet there is a comfort to voicing it: it ensures that, at least, we share this imperfect world with other. She stated a fact, people are scared. The message may not have been directed at Trump only, but others too. When I mentor or teach, I often find myself saying ‘it’s hard because it’s hard’. It typically puts people at ease. Acknowledging reality is lifting half the weight. We may not be up to the task, it’s true – but who would be? By stating the fear, Budde normalised it, and rebuilt a sense of connection.
Power wants you sad. That is the key wisdom of resistance: so you’re less creative, less able to organise, and less likely to stand up. That is the wisdom of queer activism too, and all joyful protests. If you’re looking for outcomes against the odds, lift up the energy. Tune off from the downers, and connect with aligned minds. On Saturday, we sat down close to the beach in St Kilda. A silent disco passed across the road: a bunch of voices, mainly women, shouting out ‘I don’t care, I love it,’ waving their arms around. I’ve now adopted those as a role model for courage in our times.
Thank you for joining me on this journey. Please leave comments or reach out if any of this resonates with you – and don’t hesitate to share this with your friends and networks.