By GM Jonathan Rowson [Twitter @Jonathan_Rowson] published at his weekly column at the Herald Scotland Newspaper
Winston Churchill famously said that courage was the one virtue that made possible all the others, but I think it is easier to valorise courage than it is to understand it, and we often don’t recognise it in ourselves and others.
It is widely quoted that courage is not the absence of fear but the judgment that there’s something more important than fear. That sounds right, but there’s a great deal of complexity in how judgments relate to fears that gets lost in our main cultural symbols of courage; soldiers valiantly risking their lives to safeguard the wounded, firefighters braving the flames to rescue the forgotten.
Most images of courage relate to people doing something where fear for safety might advise you to do otherwise. In addition to such heroic courage there is also a different kind of courage based on trust, and that may be even more important.
