What is Courage?

What is Courage?  noun cour·age \ˈkər-ij, ˈkə-rij\

: the ability to do something that you know is difficult or dangerous

     There seems to be an issue with this word lately. I can only hope that people start to understand that just because you don't like what a person chose to do, or if you don't agree with it or their life style that doesn't make that person less courageous. In fact, the more people who have issue with something a person does, I think lends credence to the fact that what they did was courageous. We are all courageous in many ways every day.

    You don't need to have battled cancer to be courageous. Nor do you have to have been a soldier. You can be a student who stands up to a bully, a woman who finally looks someone in the eyes and stands up for herself. A man who saves a animal from abuse. It is taking that first step.  Dressing yourself for the first time and trying again when you get it wrong.  It is being friends with someone because you like them even though others do not.  It take courage to try a new food, or to try a new religion that appeals to you.  It takes a lot of courage to do it in front of the world.  It is being you!

     If you find it difficult to do and do it, then you are courageous. There is no measurement for what is courageous except what you believe and allow yourself to accomplish. If you don't believe a person did something courageous keep it to yourself. Courage is personal to the one doing the action, not the one witnessing it. You are not them and you do not know how they view the world.  Nor do they view the world as you do.

     If someone is getting an award for their courage and you don't agree they should receive it, or think someone else is more deserving, it is more than acceptable to start your own award for recognition of courage.

     But if another agency that you are not part of chooses to recognize someones courage they are allowed to as well.  It is impossible for everyone in the world to agree on who should receive a single award.  Courage is not something that can be measure equally by everyone because we are all individual with our own set of life experiences and schema.