On Courage

“There are tragedies.” My Honduran grandmother Zoila would say that to me all the time in her heavily accented English. She would drink wine and recite Pablo Neruda poems by memory and tell me that my generation knew nothing of adversity. I thought I knew a little and was always trying to “get” my family to understand what it was like to be in my body. But I don’t know the kind of poverty they came from in Honduras. She had toes missing from gangrene caused by lack of shoes. My dad went for days at a time with no food and he used to tell me that I was far too sensitive (I’m an easy cryer) to ever go to Honduras and bear witness to the abject human suffering.

Since I was a woke 18 year old in 1991 and read the autobiography of Malcolm X, learned about the massacre at Wounded Knee and watched multiple documentaries about the various wars in Central America and all the other countries the United States has had a hand in subjugating or plundering, I've been struggling to accept the past and reconcile the hypocrisy inherent in America with my commitment to the idea of America. The truth is, I don’t feel I have a choice, I love democracy and am fully committed to it. When I hear some people talking about leaving, I can’t fathom that. After all my ancestors have survived for me to exist here —I could only be made in America. I feel inherently connected to this time and place and do feel a sense of duty and destiny for the next generations. I don’t have kids, but I am of the belief that I am responsible for the generations to come, a steward of the cultural legacy born of this experience.

We're in a precarious and unstable time right now, people are struggling to make sense of it all. The two words that seem to exemplify the time we're in more than anything is fear and courage.

Original collage art by author, available via Etsy.

I've been through cancer twice, the first time I had surgery to remove two malignant tumors and went through chemotherapy and radiation at age 4. Then being diagnosed with breast cancer at the age of 37, I had a double mastectomy. When I went in for brain surgery after my stroke at 44 to me it didn’t feel courageous because I didn’t feel I had a choice as I am committed to staying alive! I can only speak for myself but things that I have the choice to do or not do require more courage than things I feel like I have no choice in. I find it takes more courage for me to bring up a conversation that requires skill and empathy. There are different types of courage required to express emotional vulnerability, to stand up to a bully, the courage to do what's right even if it's against the grain or the courage to admit I was wrong.

Eddie Glaude, Jr writes in a recent Substack newsletter (emphasis mine):

“I called for ‘a revolution of value.’ That, if we are committed to the idea of American democracy, and by some twisted fate I am, we must seek to uproot ways of seeing and living that have made this country so shallow and fearful.

A revolution of value entails a change in how we view what matters to us as Americans. We must put forward a more expansive understanding of American democracy. This will involve sacrificing the comfort of national innocence and the willful blindness that comes with it.”

What will this require of us if we are all participants in this democracy?Acknowledging the complexity of the real life actions and attitudes of our “founding fathers” or heroes of history is a start. There's a numbing comfort in the mythologies that are perpetuated in our national psyche, for example that slavery was somehow outside of the realm of good and evil, because it was a “product of its time.” I posit that we need to cultivate the mindset of a spiritual warrior.

“Mariame Kaba says that hope is a discipline. In these coming years, we will need this discipline…to orient your brain to what is working, to see the world as a place where we can get good things done. This isn't to bypass the shitshow that's on our doorstep. It is to anchor you in the discipline we will need to move through it.” ~ Meenadchi

Some people think they have courage because they storm the capital or they tell what they deem as “jokes” that offend people. It seems to me that certain privileges can, in some cases if unaware of it, act as a drug. Privilege, like drugs, can cause delusions of grandeur and create a form of false bravado or fake courage (liquid courage). Comedians who are intellectually lazy, racist, homophobic and unfunny complain they are being “cancelled” for being outspoken implying a form of courage, but it doesn't take courage, skill, or intellect to mock or berate marginalized groups.

“Religion is for people who don't want to go to hell; spirituality is for people that have already been there.” ~12 step saying

The tools provided in 12-step program can provide a path of spiritual discipline that can prove helpful during these times. There is this notion of a fearless moral inventory. It is jarring to come to realize that the vision of reality you believed in for so long is actual a lie. Seeing reality requires courage and in order to practice that kind of courage, I need discernment, clarity or wisdom.

**From “How Al-Anon Works” by Al-Anon Family Groups**

So taking the serenity prayer for example, I need serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference. I need to be able to tell what is in my realm of influence and what is not. I also need to learn what values are most important to me and if doing what is right is important to me, I need to be able to discern what is right and what is wrong. As Isabel Wilkerson in Caste: The Origins of Our Discontent says:

“It is also tempting to vilify a single despot at the sight of injustice when, in fact, it is the actions, or more commonly inactions, of ordinary people that keep the mechanism of caste running, the people who shrug their shoulders at the latest police killing, the people who laugh off the coded put-downs of marginalized people shared at the dinner table and say nothing for fear of alienating an otherwise beloved uncle. The people who are willing to pay higher property taxes for their own children’s schools but who balk at taxes to educate the children society devalues. Or the people who sit in silence as a marginalized person, whether of color or a woman, is interrupted in a meeting, her ideas dismissed (though perhaps later adopted), for fear of losing caste, each of these keeping intact the whole system that holds everyone in its grip.”

May we all do our part to develop the discipline of courage and discernment whatever that looks for each person.

“Courage is the most important of all the virtues, because without courage you can't practice any other virtue consistently. You can practice any virtue erratically, but nothing consistently without courage.” ~Maya Angelou