pop culture, i think, gives us a mostly wrong picture of where courage comes from. in pop culture courage often comes from knowing you are the chosen one and/or have superpowers. in my experience i have been the most courageous when i felt most “in the flow of the world”
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some of the boldest things i’ve done are things that didn’t feel like “me” doing them - mostly the opposite of how pop culture heroes work (with interesting exceptions, eg avatar). it felt like i was “channeling” something, or like i was “playing improv with the universe”
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conversely the times in my life i have felt most cowardly (i mean this neutrally) were times i felt most “cut off from the flow of the world.” alone, isolated, not just from people but also sunlight, water, all good things. can’t hear the music playing so i can’t dance
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maybe one way to say it is that courage is not a thing a person has. it can’t be localized to a person. courage is relational. it is a kind of fitting of a person to the world. that fit is what distinguishes it from recklessness, which does *not* fit to the world
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i have been kind of shocked how much better i feel now than in december, and most of what’s different now is that i’m talking to people, about the stuff that’s really on my mind. and they’re *responding*! with what’s really on *their* mind! that’s the “flow of the world” for me
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This whole thread is a very Taoist view, and I love it; I think this applies to a lot more of the positive qualities/virtues than just Courage, and that this is important!
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As a specific example, I believe that the degree to which "intelligence" follows roughly the same dynamic you described in the thread on courage is very underappreciated
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