All of us are born with fear or have developed our fears as we grow and experience more things. Fear is subjective. One person may love dogs and the other may be strongly terrified of it. To many, the ocean is a relaxing place, but to a few it could be the most unsafe place they would ever be in. Some kids enjoy clowns on their birthday parties while other adults may be terrified of them even when they are already grown up and know that behind the clown’s make up and costume is just a normal person. To adrenalin junkies, skydiving is a treasured experience while to people with fear of heights, skydiving would be the death of them. To average individuals, flying is the best choice to reach destinations fast. On the other hand there are people who would rather drive one hundred hours then get on a plane.
With fear being different from one person to another, so is courage. It is a common mistake that people do when they compare one person’s courage to another individual. For example, a five year old toddler is terrified to sleep alone in his bedroom, and then his dad compares that when he was his son’s age, he was already sleeping all alone in his room with all the lights off and never having to cry in the middle of the night because of nightmares. His five-year-old son and his five-year-old self back then are absolutely not the same. Perhaps in his time, he was less exposed to horror movies and terrifying videos whereas his child has seen quite a number of traumatizing clips on the internet thus fueling his fear of being alone at night. The dad was not more courageous. He has just little to nothing to fear while his son has lot of frightening images on his mind. If his son succeeds on going through the night all by myself then that is more courageous than his dad has been when he was his age.
Courage is courage, no matter the strength or age. Something very terrifying could happen and the one less expected to do something will be the one to save the day. To make this statement clearer, let us imagine a scenario. Let us say that inside a shop, suddenly a masked man pulls a gun out and points at the cashier for some money. In the store, there is a tall bulky guy who obviously goes to the gym and looks very strong. He is in his middle 20s, apparently at the peak of his physical capacities. But then he does nothing, although he was the most likely candidate for the people to do something about the incident. Instead, an older guy in his 50s with gray hair and already skinny arms, goes to attack the robber from the behind with a punch to the side so that it goes down to the floor. The old guy then tackles the thief and manage to hold him until police arrives. Although someone else looked stronger and more capable, he does not have the courage that the older guy has. Courage is a totally different thing from strength or age. Courage is something set apart from all the other, and it is very valuable virtue to possess.
