Not doing something because you are afraid of what others may think of you is cowardly. But not letting the fear stop you from doing something is courageous and garners respect and admiration from those of us who put more stock in following honorable principles than from avoiding from them. Learn this as fast as possible, no one will care about you as much as you can for yourself. What others think is about themselves so worrying about what they think about you is ridiculous. Show some backbone and live your life as best you can under your own scrutiny and the honor that exemplifies. We all know what the differences are between right and wrong. Sure, sometimes it is complicated but in our hearts it isn't. Doing right by principles we all understand is a choice. Ignoring those same choices when the time for right and wrong is upon us is the fear that cowards employ. There is no honor in that. You must decide if your life is going to be an honorable one or one that just tries to avoid dishonor. You can't live on the fence waiting to see which side you will come down upon. Make a choice to be admired and respected or make a choice to be selfish and unworthy of being exemplified by those who look up to you. There is no middle ground. So those who are waiting to avoid the hard choices surrounding right and wrong in life are by default already choosing to be wrong. It does take character to move past fear and into action based on what is right. That is the key, moving past fear when fear can have a grip like the jaws of frozen steel. Remember, fear is real but it is not impossible to break free from and once you defeat fear, the next time it shows up it won't seem so debilitating. It gets easier to be a person of courage so get going and quit waiting to be who you really are.
2 comments:
In an ethnography class today, we discussed why people don't show up to vote or why they are apathetic. I mentioned that there is a lot of fear in this society that is causing the problems. Others in the class (all younger than me) believe "what good will your actions do," "nothing's going to change." They think that those few that run our country are too powerful to defeat and that even a large number of people don't have the power to do so. It as if they have given up on life, or on living a purposeful life (one that helps uplift society). In the 1960s, people literally put their lives on the line, including being beaten and jailed so that we could have racial equality in this country. And, although improvement is still needed, we have come a long way towards achieving racial equality in the United States. If there hadn't been large numbers of courageous and hope people, we would still have separate drinking fountains, segregated schools and buses, and regular lynching of black people. When the odds were against winning the civil rights battle, the people with hope made a difference. That is why an African American is in the White House today.
"what good will your actions do?" Right, giving up without a fight is like being a coward. Ignorance is keeping those who would quit before starting. There is nuance to politics and if the young do not pay enough attention to realize that then we are not educating an intelligent future.
Post a Comment