What is Courage Anyway?

You cannot swim for new horizons until you have courage to lose sight of the shore.” ― William Faulkner

You might be wondering how a set of pictures of a pigeon would qualify to explain this elusive quality of courage. But the fact is that I was returning from a 25^th year reunion of my college with a friend in November last year and we were in the lounge at the Delhi airport, having sated the hunger pangs and settling down to wait for our respective flights when we caught sight of the pigeon. He had been under one of the lounge seats and just popped out startling us. There were enough crumbs of food scattered on the floor for him to forage while darting between seated people’s legs and dodging walkers down the aisle. Few people paid him any attention at all.

But we were captivated. Starting off with the hypotheses that the lone pigeon was injured and therefore couldn’t fly and then reinforcing it by the fact that the pigeon was only hopping around and not trying to fly even when a passer-by suddenly startled him, we were quite convinced that while other pigeons would dart into the lounge for food when there were no people there, this little pigeon was forced to hide under the seats as he couldn’t make an escape. That is, until the pigeon completed its foraging trip and took to sudden glorious flight, at first low above the heads of the people and then darting higher up to the ceiling until it exited the lounge through a sky light that was ajar.

I have thought about that occasion several times after that and wondered what would have prompted the pigeon to behave in this fashion. While Faulkner’s words are clearly pointing out that we must have the guts and gumption to swim for the far shore even when you lose sight of the near one, I wonder, if in all cases, we do realise that the far shore is that far? If we did not know the distance and still decided to swim for it, would it count as courage? Would it be counted only when we reach a point of no return when we must take a decision on swimming forward or returning to the near shore? Or would it be counted when you have reached the end of your limit and are still forced to go on?

Take for instance a baby that sees a candle and is entranced by the dancing flame and tries to catch it. We try and tell the baby that the flame would be hot and that it would hurt. We don’t call the baby brave and praise its courage. At what point of time in the baby’s journey of life does he stop being innocent and curiously naïve and move to becoming stupid or ignorant? Exactly at that point when we believe that the baby should have the knowledge of the fact that the flame is hot and therefore should not touch it. What of the school boy who dares to put his hand into a flame anyway? Is that bravery or bravado?

Is courage a quality that stems from clearly weighing all consequences and still taking the plunge or does it come from not knowing the consequences at all? Is there a difference between the two, because, when you weigh the consequences, there is still that element of belief or probability that makes one think that one can do it? Would that belief still exist if the outcome was a certainty and not a possibility? Is courage the ability to challenge the odds or is it the ability to stare in the face of certainty and still walk into the dark forest with nothing in your hand?

Can one distinguish between the courage of a tight rope walker who will walk on a thin rope between two skyscrapers and the courage of a child entering a pitch-dark room when the power is gone? Both instances require one to put aside a natural fear and brave it into a situation where there is a probability of some amount of danger. One could say that there is a choice that sometimes defines the courage that is required to deal with a situation.

One has read about heroes and heroines in battle whose glory has been sung time and again. They had a choice; but decided that the alternative is simply unacceptable and therefore, the only path left is the one that needs courage to walk it. What of those cases where there is no choice at all and the person must walk the path knowing full well that the most probably outcome is negative. And to choose that path knowing the consequences, that must then be the definition of courage that we are most comfortable with, like the swimmer who has reached the end of his strength and still chooses to go on rather than call out to the support boat that is following him

And so, in the case of the pigeon, it is most likely that while its peers were more cautious and approached the lounge only when people were sparse or absent, this one was much more confident, either of the fact that the people there would not hurt him or that he would be able to escape any attempt to catch him. Therefore, the pigeon knew of the choices and the possible consequences and chose to believe in his own ability to deal with them. That, at the end of the day, is the courage that we all praise and look up to.