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Rosa Parks, Everyday Courage
Ordinary life evokes more extraordinary courage than combat or adventure because both the chances and inevitabilities of life — grief, illness, disappointment, pain, struggle, poverty, loss, terror, heartache: all of them common features of the human condition, and all of them experienced by hundreds of thousands of people every day. (Grayling, 2001, p21)
I found this passage in an AC Grayling book the other day. It had been sitting on the shelf for many years, in a community of other unread books.
I must’ve been craving a little philosophy.
The book was The Meaning Of Things: Applying Philosophy To Life and this section, Courage, opens with the following quote from Plato.
Courage Is A Form Of Salvation.
That’s nice. The idea that salvation and hope come from within, not in a capsule, a certificate, a review, or an endorsement. In a world that is so hard to pin down for meaning sometimes that quote resonates.
While we’re busy gorging on tales of triumph and success we’re in danger of missing the power of everyday courage of those around us; right now and those who have gone before.
And while holding up these stories of recognisable and tangible conquests as benchmarks are we underplaying our own everyday courage? Worse, are we missing real…
