By Segun Durowaiye

On courage

Sir: ”Courage is the thing. All goes if courage goes.” Sir James Barrie once wrote, and most of us would agree with him that courage is a “cog” virtue, round which others move.

Courage, as the dictionary tells us is bravery, and boldness.

The word originated from Latin word for heart.

So in entirety, belongs to the heart.
There are phrases like, “Don’t lose heart!” Which really means, “Keep your courage up.”

Courage is a quality lying between the intellectual and the sensual in a man, partaking of both.
It is a quality of heart which enables one to meet dangers and difficulties with valour and without faltering.

In its active forms, it can be bravery, dauntlessness, gallantry, boldness, valour, intrepidity, prowess and heroism.
In its passive form, it is more generally called, Fortitude, meaning strength from the Latin, “Fortitudo”, that particular kind of strength that can sit still and suffer and endure, and take whatever blows come to one from fate and Providence. Courage can be really daunting and strong in its total manifestation.

The Oral Literature of all countries preserves the folk memory of such great warriors and haunting men.

Nearer home, we have the story of Wago and Olumba, the warriors and hunters, in which the same qualities of active courage were displayed, in the book, “The Great Ponds.”

There is another particular kind of courage as displayed by the great General and Emperor, Napoleon calls the rarest,

“As to moral courage, I have very rarely met with the two—o-clock in the morning courage. I mean unprepared courage.”
Soldiers undergo a long training to ensure that their courage is always a “prepared” one.

A kind of courage necessary in our own days is that exemplified in “the man” in Armah’s, “The Beautiful Ones Are Not Yet Born” who refuses to go with the corrupt practices of everyone around him, and suffers pain and humiliation, but possess inner peace at its deepest level because he was affirming his own inner truth and dancing to his own music, a music that no one else seems to be hearing.

At its peak and best, human beings need to be courageous because there are humongous challenges hovering around every individual in this global village we live in.

One should seek solace and intervention from the Almighty God because He is the beginning and the total end of our lives and existence.

In everything we do He knows and He is the Unseen Eyes that guards His own and nurture them with His hallowed grace.
Think about it.

Segun Durowaiye can be reached via 08055356855.