Courage is the quality of mind or spirit that enables a person to face difficulty, danger, and fear with bravery. It is a quality that not everyone possesses. Firefighters are some of the most courageous people one can meet. To risk your life for someone you do not know is truly brave. Jim smith, a fireman, after rescuing a dozen men and women from the World Trade Centre, commented; “Courage is just a matter of luck of being in the right place at the right time”.
Jim smith self-effacing words actually portray the humbleness of an honest, simple man who depreciates his noblest act of saving human lives just because of his ignorant thought that anyone in his place would have tried to do even much better than what he had done. The specious statement that courage is common to most of us but that most of us never have an opportunity to show it is de-facto made by the sophists who are artful sorcerers-adepts in the art of conjuring lame excuses.
Courage is or never was, to pull in Jim smith’s words, a matter of luck. It is an occult God-gifted ability which is not at all concerned merely with physical strength or faculties. True love, philanthropy, passion to help, self-sacrifice, and empathy, all together give The Pentagon which when burns in the fire of selflessness gives the aromatic fumes of courage.
To corroborate the idea just physical vigor can never lead to the genesis of the true fearless courage, numerous example can be quoted here. For instance, the prevailing terrorism in the world today is the biggest question mark to the courage of fully-armed forces. If we purport to have courageous armed forces then why we are unable to obliterate this farrago. Simply because we lack the five essential components of courage.
In a materialistic age such as ours today, a common man, captivated by the momentary luxuries has set aside all morality, social duty and ethical teachings. Such a man cannot love, cannot help, cannot empathize and cannot sacrifice at all for the suffering humanity because he cowers at the mere mention of disposing luxury. His cowardice due to the fear of misery pulls him away from advancing even one step towards courage.
We have seen Palestine, Bosnia, Afghanistan, Iraq and others being plagued by unjust wars, and God forbid, will keep on seeing until and unless the spirit of courage fires within us., arousing us from this shameful stupor of inactivity and instead evoking humanitarian consideration.
From several opposite day to day examples pertaining to our social lives, it can be concluded that courage is in fact the fruit of a tree named Selflessness which has the attribute of love, antipathy and a selfless zeal to help. So, evidently luck does not influence courage which springs from moral education, ethics, sympathy, ardent love for humanity and the zeal to be helpful to everyone from the blind crippled lady crossing the street to the victims of unjust wars.