From the Scratching Post:Courage

By Ken Marks

[Originally posted four days ago (on November 25, 2021) on The Scratching Post. Extracted here by permission of the author.]

The subject of courage baffles me. I hear people use the word, I see it in news stories, but I fail to grasp its essence. Maybe it has no essence. I’m told it has a relationship with fear and virtue, but I can’t find a felicitous connection. I’ve sought help in collections of quotations, and ... well, I’ll just show you what happens.

      I’ll start with the view of courage held by Joe Sixpack, as expressed by John Wayne, The Duke of Hollywood legend. With cowboy brevity, he said:

Courage is being scared to death ... and saddling up anyway.

    So many problems there. Wayne is offering only the warrior’s notion of courage, the kind that would probably be the death of me. I imagine my sergeant ordering me and a few others to charge up Pork Chop Hill and take out a machine gun nest. That sounds pretty reckless to me; I’ve got a family back home, and, oh yeah ... I don’t want to die. And damn that sergeant for the conflict he’s laid on me — either being labeled a coward and court-martialed or being riddled with bullets.
    OK, say I and one other soldier survive….

[Read the whole thing on The Scratching Post.]

Copyright © 2021 by Ken Marks Ken Marks was a contributing editor with Paul Clark & Tom Lowe when “Moristotle” became “Moristotle & Co.” A brilliant photographer, witty conversationalist, and elegant writer, Ken contributed photographs, essays, and commentaries from mid-2008 through 2012. Late in 2013, Ken birthed the blog The Scratching Post. He also posts albums of his photos on Flickr.