Courage Makes Us Bigger Than Fear
Osho said that courage comes first and everything else comes after. Then comes sincerity, when it costs. Then he will love, when circumstances turn against him. Then comes trust, when someone fails us. Then comes the suit and the audacity of the investigator, to explore the reality that surrounds him, that surrounds us.
Well actually bravery can be a great beginning, but the truth is that not everything else follows. Actually, there is something that always comes first. That something is fear. Because few brave people exist without fear, without overcoming, without indirectly assuming a defeat, which by chance can come to them exactly the same as cowards. Thus, we can say that fear is the forging of the brave in a cold night in which doubts fall sharply.
Fear and bravery flow into everyday heroes
A fear that appears when we have to tell a friend that we have hurt him, that it is we who once spoke ill of him. That we have been the ones who have rushed to judge him, who have discouraged him when he told us that dream that he was so excited about. The truth is that we had a hard time imagining him without the usual jokes, undressing him of his most common defects and thinking that he could work so hard that they were not an insurmountable obstacle. He had failed so many times that we stopped giving him opportunities before reality.
A fear that appears when someone alters the frequency with which our heart beats. Fiery butterflies that choke on words that fail to come out of our mouths. In our declaration, without wanting to, we always put part of our pride, and we try to do our best. We imagine the situation a thousand times and we do not want, for the world, that that which flies and is born from our entrails ends up on the ground. And the thing is that there is no other place, other than a declaration of love, in which hope, petition and prayer merge in that way.
A suspicion that is born when they betray us. Someone who was walking by our side disappears and takes away a lot of lists that we had made together and even those that we had made … at our own risk. It gets carried away and partly leaves us naked, because whatever paper we write on from then on seems to become opaque to believing in what we write. And we say no, a thousand times no, with anger because we do not want to go back up to fall suddenly. Boredom and apathy may reign downstairs, but at least they mask the pain better than a shot of gin at two in the morning.
The woman trembles when she tells her friend that yes, she is now in a position that she would never have imagined. That what started as a threat accompanied by a sinister smile … is now a collection of blows that shape a hole, black, from which more and more rays of light pass by.
Now she is like that woman from the news with her face made up by the blows, the one from whom she always distanced herself because she did not want to accept that one day she could go through the same situation. At the same time, she feels that she has betrayed all the people around her, one by one, so as not to discover the reason for her insomnia. All for a love, which made a swamp, had already swallowed her body and was about to strangle her soul.
The little one speaks, looking at the ground, because he has difficulty putting words to situations that are beyond him. You don’t know what you’ve done to make your teammates trip you up, kick your backpack, or fill your sandwich with sand. He doesn’t know the words to tell the people he loves the most that the son they brag about so much is a sad boy who lives amidst threats that overwhelm him.
The woman who has to get home and explain to her family that she has just been fired is crying. His childhood friend also cries, who has been looking for work for two years and who has only found on his way people interested in taking advantage of his misfortune, in keeping those savings that he now manages with the fear that one day they will end. A day that if it continues like this, will come soon. Tomorrow he and she will go out into the street, curriculum in hand, and their experience will be of little or nothing, because that only serves young people who do not have it, but perhaps they will be lucky, or rather, justice.
Courage: before daring, intelligence
The truth is that we are surrounded by brave, silent, kind, dedicated. We are also surrounded by people who can be if we lend them our resources for a moment. Our time, our desire, our illusion, our voice or our words. If we tell them that we believe in them and we don’t stop giving them opportunities before reality.
Before bravery there is fear, and between the two, between encouragement and attitude, there is intelligence. Because most of the brave, at least of those who survive, do have a point of daring, but they have an even greater point of intelligence. An intelligence that has nothing to do with closing your eyes and jumping into the pool, but with opening them to raise awareness in those most critical moments. At the same time, courage allows creativity, the liberation of intuition and the reflection of those messages that come from our instincts.
From intelligent courage comes pride and a different look towards fear, which does not lose respect, but it does change sides. It has ceased to be the enemy to become an ally, a warning sign that indicates points where perhaps we should put a point of caution. This does not mean that we stop, but rather that we make a brief stop to reassess the situation.
Brave intelligent people populate the world, speaking, claiming and feeding their faith above what others may think. .. and they do it simply because they think that what they want is worth more than the fear that the obstacle they anticipate may instill in them.
