Compendium 36 — Courage is Calling
"It is a rough road that leads to the heights of greatness." — Lucius Annaeus Seneca
📖 Brief Overview
Ryan Holiday's forthcoming series on the four Stoic virtues begins with Courage is Calling.
These virtues are courage, temperance, justice and wisdom.
The last of the great Roman emperors, Marcus Aurelius, called them the "touchstones of goodness". They're known as the cardinal virtues in Stoicism and serve as a compass for orienting ourselves towards virtue.
Courage is Calling deconstructs courageous acts through a diverse collection of historical stories followed by probing questions. The book is organized into short chapters that analyze courage from a variety of perspectives. Holiday shares stories that display the virtues of courage while offering moralistic examples. These stories act as a springboard for Holiday's probing questions designed for reflection.
💡 Ten Big Ideas
1. The Choice of Hercules
Holiday begins the book with a condensed version of a Greek fable, The Choice of Hercules. This story serves as the backdrop for the entire book, emphasizing courage as a choice we all make rather than an inherent characteristic. As Holiday includes a fraction of the story, included below is my own version, expanded where necessary.
Hercules stands at a crossroads. Having walked for many miles around Greece's spiraling mountains, he has come to a fork in the road. Hercules stands in the middle of the two paths, shifting his weight uncomfortably, staring off into the distance in deep deliberation. In the absence of guidance to separate the identical paths before him, Hercules decides to pick one at random. As he steps forward, two goddesses manifest beside him. One is Kakia, the other Aretê. Both goddesses reign over a path, intent on convincing Hercules to choose theirs.
Hercules is promised a life of luxury, one devoid of hardship, should he follow the path of Kakia.
The second goddess, Aretê tells Hercules that her path will require discipline and courage. Men cannot achieve great things without some effort and application, she says. Aretê emphasizes to Hercules that tests will be laid upon him, he will suffer hardships, and he will endure great losses. Aretê promises Hercules the opportunity to demonstrate his courage and discipline, which will earn him true happiness when reflecting on his honorable deeds.
Hercules chose the path of Aretê, avoiding the enticement of Kakia. He suffered more pain than any man before him, eventually dying in the most extreme agony imaginable. His father, Zeus, was so impressed with Hercules' sacrifice that he brought him back from the underworld, elevating him to the status of a God.
The point of this story is not to trivialize fact from fiction but to take the experiences of Hercules to heart. Storytelling serves to capture a lesson, imbuing it with meaning in a way that facts cannot.
"Tell me the facts and I'll learn. Tell me the truth and I'll believe. But tell me a story and it will live in my heart forever." — Ancient proverb.
Hercules' choice teaches us that we will all meet Kakia and Aretê in life. The crossroads Hercules found himself at is one we encounter daily in each decision that we make. Our choices lead us down many paths that ultimately shape our lives. Should Kakia seduce us, our lives will be a trifle of instant gratification, stagnation and regret. Aretê's route will provide us with the opportunity to show our true metal. As Seneca would write, "I judge you unfortunate because you have never lived through misfortune. You have passed through life without an opponent — no one can ever know what you are capable of, not even you."
2. Courage as a Virtue
The Choice of Hercules depicts the choice of vice and virtue.
"Virtue" can seem old-fashioned. Yet virtue—arete—translates to something very simple and very timeless: Excellence. Moral. Physical. Mental.
Courage to the Stoics wasn't just some lofty goal among many, but one of the four Cardinal Virtues.
They're called "cardinal," C. S. Lewis pointed out, not because they come down from church authorities but because they originate from the Latin cardo, or hinge. It's pivotal stuff. It's the stuff that the door to the good life hangs on. North, south, east, west—the four virtues are a kind of compass (there's a reason that the four points on a compass are called the "cardinal directions"). They guide us. They show us where we are and what is true.
If these concepts seem unattainable to you, Holiday presents them as a skill to cultivate.
Aristotle described virtue as a kind of craft, something to pursue just as one pursues the mastery of any profession or skill. "We become builders by building and we become harpists by playing the harp," he writes. "Similarly, then, we become just by doing just actions, temperate by doing temperate actions, brave by doing brave actions.
3. Preparing for the Inevitable
It's long been held that there are two kinds of courage, physical and moral. Physical courage is a knight riding into battle. It's a firefighter rushing into a burning building. It's an explorer setting out for the arctic, defying the elements. Moral courage is a whistleblower taking on powerful interests. It's the truth teller who says what no one else will say. It's the entrepreneur going into business for themselves, against all odds.
“The only time a man can be brave is when he is afraid.” - George R.R. Martin
The hero and the coward are both gripped by fear, but only the hero acts. Our fear is a protective mechanism that has kept us alive for 300,000 years. The key to cultivating courage is not ignoring our emotions but tempering them through training.
Training is not just something that athletes and soldiers do. It is the key to overcoming fear in any and all situations. What we do not expect, what we have not practiced, has an advantage over us. What we have prepared for, what we have anticipated, we will be able to answer. As Epictetus says, the goal when we experience adversity is to be able to say, "This is what I've trained for, for this is my discipline." If you don't want to flinch when it comes, Seneca would say around the same time, train before it comes. What we are familiar with, we can manage. Danger can be mitigated by experience and by good training. Fear leads to aversion. Aversion to cowardice. Repetition leads to confidence. Confidence leads to courage.
To borrow a famous phrase from Allen Iverson: We're talking about practice? Yes, we're talking about practice. Because it's the most important thing. With practice, you go through the actions in your mind. You build the muscle memory of what you do in this situation or that one. You learn how to fortify and are fortified in the process. You run through the drills, you play your scales. You have someone ask you purposely tough questions. You get comfortable with discomfort. You train at your T-pace for deliberate intervals, raising your threshold as a runner. You familiarize. You assemble your rifle with a blindfold on, you work out with a weight vest on. You do it a thousand times, and then a thousand times more while there is no pressure so that when there is, you'll know exactly what to do. Know-how is a help. But it's preparation that makes you brave.
To each," Winston Churchill would say, "there comes in their lifetime a special moment when they are figuratively tapped on the shoulder and offered the chance to do a very special thing, unique to them and fitted to their talents. What a tragedy if that moment finds them unprepared or unqualified for that which could have been their finest hour." It's more accurate to say that life has many of these moments, many such taps on the shoulder.
Our training ensures we will meet fear where we stand. When our tap on the shoulder comes, will we be ready to answer it?
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