There’s a Fine Line between Courage and Foolishness
Last week, I decided to forego the mall and take my 11-year old son Santiago to a secondhand store to purchase him some dress clothes for a friend’s wedding. As I was hunting for suits in the boys department, Santi went on his own hunting trip and returned a few minutes later clutching a marble trophy and looking me right in the eyes. “Can I get this?” he asked. I looked more closely at the trophy and saw it had an engraving:
A courageous individual constitutes a majority.
I asked him why he wanted it. He said, “It will remind me to always stand up for what I believe in no matter what other people think.” I paused for a moment. Then, I looked at Santi and realized again how fortunate I was to live with one of my greatest teachers.
The engraving on the trophy inspired me to reflect more on courage, and the courageous individuals it might be referring to. Of course, Rosa Parks came to mind, as well as the young Chinese student who stood against the line of tanks in Tiananmen Square. I also thought of Kentucky Senator Jim Bunning, who singlehandedly blocked the vote on a bill which would have extended unemployment benefits to millions of laid-off workers. There was no doubt in my mind that these individuals firmly and passionately believed in what they were doing, and whether one agrees with their opinions and tactics or not, their courage could not be denied.
But there is a fine line between courage and foolishness. I believe that line is defined by timing, context, the message, and the messenger.
In 1863, nearly one hundred years before Mrs. Parks boarded that historic bus, Mrs. Charlotte L. Brown took a seat in the mid-section of a San Francisco railcar and was forcibly removed by the driver. Both Mrs. Brown and Mrs. Parks were African-American women of a similar age living under oppressive conditions. They posed no threat to others, but simply were tired and wanted to take an empty seat. So the context, message and messengers were much the same in both situations. But the timing was not right for Mrs. Brown and she all but disappeared from our history books. But for Mrs. Parks, history and society proved that the timing was right for her action to have a larger impact.
Likewise for Senator Bunning, he stood his ground as his allies continued to withdraw their support. Was he falling victim to timing or context? Perhaps his message was misdirected, or he was simply the wrong person to deliver it. Whatever the reason, his show of courage was quickly slipping into an act of foolishness.
Wise leaders need to have the courage to stand by their convictions no matter what. But they also need to look around and see who is listening. Are their listeners leaning forward with piqued interest or are their arms crossed with impatience and disinterest? Is this the right moment?
Senator Bunning decided that it was not his right moment. Mind you, I can’t really know whether he waffled on his beliefs and convictions; but his change in tactics suggest that he understood the time was not right and no one was standing with him.
As leaders committed to social change, we need to be mindful of our timing, context, messages and messengers.
Thinking, communicating and planning strategically are keys in assuring success. Much of my work involves getting organizations and communities on the same page with their mission, vision, values and strategic direction. And when that happens, the courageous individual can rest assured that her opinion will have a great and lasting impact.
P.S. Santi’s trophy is sitting on his bookcase. We also got him a designer suit, a shirt, tie and a pair of dress shoes - all for twenty-four dollars - and he looked impeccable. So the moral of this story is to check out your local secondhand store. You never know what treasures might await you.
Fear
Ultimately we know deeply that the other side of every fear is a freedom.
~ Marilyn Ferguson (1938-2008)
I grew up in Brooklyn, New York in the 1970s. It wasn’t Brooklyn’s finest decade. Drugs, gangs, vandalism and street-level violence were part of everyday life. As a youngster my daily fun included being robbed, chased and assaulted with primitive weapons (for example, knives, baseball bats and brass knuckles, although not all at once!). To get a sense of New York in those days, I recommend renting the movie “Death Wish,” or the original “Taking of Pelham 123,” recently remade with John Travolta as the lead bad guy.
Children learn to accept their daily experiences as normal, so we didn’t complain much. As a result, the adults in my youth were somewhat oblivious to the risks we confronted. I walked (round trip) about three miles to school. During the hours between 3 and 6 p.m., I could have been anywhere in a maze of 200 square city blocks, up to God knows what. Cell phones didn’t exist so there was no way to “check in.” Our parents (who were educated, responsible, and intelligent) didn’t fret much, despite the growing awareness that crime and violence were spiraling out of control. When I said I was “going out” that meant I could head off in any direction I chose, to do anything I wanted, as long as it was not illegal. This might involve crossing busy highways, scaling and climbing over the diversity of broken urban terrain, picking up things that were rusted and filthy (including, for example, live ammo), investigating abandoned cars or houses, and taking the subways and busses to wherever they went, miles away from home.
Wordle
Today, I live in a quiet, orderly Pennsylvania suburb with my wife and our four children age 5 to 14. It is the safest place I can imagine. In fifteen years, I have never witnessed anything illegal, nor experienced even the slightest worry about crime or violence. Nevertheless, the adults in our community have scared our children to death. Our local public schools teach children how to avoid kidnappers, sexual predators and bullies. A recent seminar focused on avoiding cyber-stalkers, presenting the Internet as yet another terrible threat. Our children have absorbed the message that they live in an extremely dangerous world. It hit me one day when my son, then eleven, didn’t want to walk alone to a neighborhood store several blocks away because “something might happen” on the way.
Given my childhood, this fear seemed preposterous. But upon reflection, I realized that I myself had acquired an irrational need to know exactly what my kids were doing at every hour of the day, and to know that they were always 100% safe. I had begun to feel uncomfortable that they would try to cross a four lane road to go the ice cream store near where we live. An adult needed to help with that, right?
Some might say (including me) that I’ve become a paranoid nut, but frank conversations with other parents of my generation reveal the same underlying emotion: fear. We are worried to death that our children will be hurt out there in that awful, mean, cruel world. Indeed, having bragged about the safety of my neighborhood, I am now imagining that I will be struck down in some ghastly, random act of violence. It would serve me right for being so disrespectful of the dangers!
The modern media is at least in part responsible for our pervasive fear. The 24-hour video news cycle guarantees that the most hideous and despicable acts of mankind will not only make headlines in all their gory detail, but will also be morbidly enshrined in novels, movies and television shows. Today we have not only CSI Las Vegas, but also Miami and New York, so that serial killers and sociopaths can entertain all parts of the country. Meanwhile on Fox’s 24 nuclear bombs and biological weapons go off and mortally wound the heroes, even superman Jack Bauer.
And of course, there is 9/11, played, replayed, commemorated and serving as the backdrop for every serious conversation about national security. With 9/11 seared into the national consciousness, America today is not only home of the brave, but of the suspicious, worried and wary. Every day millions of travelers are reminded about the pervasive threat of death at the hands of terrorists masked as fellow citizens. That was the goal of the terrorists, right? To scare us.
But fear is also relative. In the 1970s, in the midst of the cold war, each day we faced the prospect of total nuclear annihilation. At risk were not just our little lives, but all life on earth. The famous Flintstones cartoon featured a comic character from the future, the “Great Gazoo,” sent back to the Stone Age as punishment for inventing a switch that could obliterate the universe. Mutually assured destruction did have its perverse comforts. There was something oddly reassuring in the idea that if one of us would go, so would we all. And not just us, but also the dogs and the hummingbirds. We speculated that the roaches and rats would survive as mutants. Do you remember Charlton Heston’s final chilling line from Beneath the Planet of the Apes?
In one of the countless billions of galaxies in the universe, lies a medium-sized star, and one of its satellites, a green and insignificant planet, is now dead.
Somehow the prospect of our universe snapping out of existence put all the small dangers we faced in perspective. Compared with instantaneous extinction of all life, global warming and terror seem like manageable threats.
Mark Twain said that worry is paying interest on a debt you may not owe, a thought my grandmother repeated to me. Lately it seems our post-cold-war, post- 9/11 zeitgeist, with its dreaded mushroom clouds, dirty bombs and pandemics, teaming with bizarre serial killers stalking this No County for Old Men, has produced a mountainous debt of paranoia, serviced at subprime interest rates of worry. The worry payments drain our spiritual capital reserves, pushing us to the brink of cultural and community bankruptcy, a state that leaves us with nothing but to cower inside our mini-fortresses, with our 2nd Amendment guns and duck tape, watching late night cable-TV experts whining “what a world!” in front of spellbinding touch-screen displays.
Aristotle, perhaps the most famous philosopher of the subject, thought of courage as the rational mean between fear and confidence. In his view, the courageous were not fearless. On the contrary, they were fearful, but marshaled the inner strength to move forward in the face of it, confronting risk head-on when reason justified the cause.
Aristotle got it right. The courageous live fully despite fear and risk, not without it, recognizing that the quest for total security yields a terrible reward. Security’s prize costs us everything we cherish, because life’s greatest gifts - freedom, love, friendship, creative expression, adventure, the growth of the heart and mind - require vulnerability. As Tom Jones wrote poetically in The Fantasticks, “Without a hurt, the heart is hollow.” Seeking a full heart, the courageous brave a hurt.
Americans must recapture the true meaning of courage. True courage does not obsess about security. We who live in the “home of the brave” must not sacrifice freedom to avoid risk. Let your children cross the road by themselves. Let them get lost and explore the city and the frontier. Go to a “dangerous neighborhood” and strike up a conversation. Take the bus late at night and walk home in the shadows. Go to a foreign country and live with strange people who think differently and might hate you. Someone is probably going to get seriously hurt. But someone might also experience the thrill of actually living.
Quality Leadership Demands Courage and Action
Writing a blog is a new adventure for me. I am excited, apprehensive, wondering who will be reading what I write, and looking forward to feedback, dialogue, and new ideas. I am looking forward to sharing my thoughts about leadership and other current agendas through this medium. This first thought piece will be my introduction to you and your introduction to me. The essential nature of courage and action in leadership on every level, whether it be in schools, communities, corporations, or government has become an issue of great importance to me. Every day I look for examples of courageous leadership and find that they are very scarce!
The crucial factors promoting successful leadership are commitment, passion to make a difference, a vision or foresight for achieving positive change, developing a trusting environment and the courage to take action.
Ghandi has been quoted as saying that the moral courage to act comes from identification with the intrinsic good in oneself and in others. It is moral courage that determines the standard and quality of leadership found in the various sectors of our society. When moral courage is exercised, individuals take action, and they display the courage to do what they know is right! They are willing to face the consequences that in some cases can result in loss of friends, position, money, and even what society might label as success. Most of us have had to make some very difficult decisions in our lives. We recognize that to do what we know is right, and to treat all members of society as equals who are deserving of our attention and love requires an extraordinary amount of courage. Have we always had the courage to act? To do what is right?
We all dream of being successful and of making a difference, but more frequently than not, we allow ourselves to succumb to the gnawing fear of failure or ridicule that paralyzes us, and keeps us from taking action. Preconceived notions about what others may judge to be our ability to succeed or fail are deeply ingrained in our minds from early childhood. One of the most difficult things for human being to do is to release these engrained patterns of thinking, to move beyond deeply embedded mental barriers. Thoughts such as, I’m not a leader, I’m not smart enough, I was born on the wrong side of the tracks, I went to a second rate school …or even worse, if I do act, what if I make a mistake! This negative thinking deters us from taking action that might make a great difference in achieving the common good.
We are so fearful that we lose sight of the real factors most crucial to promoting successful leadership. What are these factors? Well, not money, not social class not the judgment of our friends and colleagues, and please forgive me, but its not even academic degrees! The crucial factors promoting successful leadership are COMMITMENT, PASSION TO MAKE A DIFFERENCE, A VISION OR FORESIGHT FOR ACHIEVING POSITIVE CHANGE, DEVELOPING A TRUSTING ENVIRONMENT AND THE COURAGE TO TAKE ACTION.
Perhaps this last element, the courage to take action, is the source of our greatest struggle. We have the intelligence or the intuition about how to makes things better, we have the vision and the passion, but we fail to act!
Right now I feel there is a change in the air. Our new leaders in Washington are taking courageous leadership actions. Whether they are right or wrong actions remains to be seen, but, they are courageously acting and not standing still! We live in a democratic society so it is within our power to either join the movement or bravely suggest alternative avenues to create a new future for ourselves and for our communities. If you don’t like the path that is being created for a new and better environment then give us another plan or idea, but don’t waste time by fearfully doing nothing or by throwing rocks at someone else’s ideas! Criticizing others without offering alternative suggestions is cowardice not courage!