The Thing You Think You Cannot Do by Gordon Livingston

Author:Gordon Livingston
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780738215792
Publisher: Da Capo Press

Courage can be taught only by example.

And what he greatly thought he nobly dared.

—Homer

After we have defined courage as a choice to confront our fears, we wonder how to both express and teach this virtue to our children. The lecture method will not work here, and our schools have little room in their curricula to teach virtue (even if they knew how). No matter how much we wish to be safe, life gives us many opportunities to be brave, if only in the ways we age, experience loss, treat each other, and face our mortality.

Of all the forms of courage that we celebrate, physical courage is the easiest to recognize, which is why we make heroes of our athletes. The kind of fortitude required to endure pain and face injury while displaying skill on the playing field is easy to observe and universally admired. Athletics provide our most reliable meritocracy. Although in most human endeavors we can pretend to be something we are not, the ability to play a game well cannot be faked. People who themselves cannot hit a ball or make a tackle nevertheless can become expert at discerning the skill or lack of it of those who do such things for a living. “Toughness,” a synonym for physical courage, is an easily recognizable trait, especially in contact sports, for those who pursue the remorseless goal of victory. Sports also emphasize what one does right now, overshadowing past accomplishment. Each game is a new beginning with a requirement to perform again with the knowledge that your job is always at risk and that others, equally talented, are eager to take your place. Imagine having that pressure in your job.

However athletic we may be, we soon learn that our chances of earning a living playing a game are remote because too many others are better. We need to find some other way to express courage in our lives. The most widely recognized form of courage is again physical and consists of some form of military heroism. An entire graduated system of valor awards has been established to recognize courage in battle—above the risk that all soldiers assume by their willingness just to be there. Unfortunately, to bring this system to bear we require a war. Although it is not often spoken of, part of the appeal of war is that it serves as a stage on which courage is tested and rewarded. In this sense, military service has been a traditional rite of passage for men, which explains, for example, some of the enthusiasm that has traditionally marked the onset of our military adventures, from the Civil War to Iraq. Only in retrospect do we seem to appreciate the costs of these enterprises.

The award of medals for valor in combat is a notoriously flawed process involving witness descriptions, the military’s need for heroes, and even the occasional requirement for a cover-up. War story: As a flight surgeon in Vietnam, part of my assignment was to provide medical services to the helicopter unit that was attached to our regiment.

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