Courage to Do What You Must

Courage is doing things you must do, that you do not want to do.  I have learned what courage looks like from some of the best books I have read.  The hardest tests are those that require the character to do what he feels is right when others around him believe differently.  To go against what everyone else says is right and follow your chosen course shows great courage.  The power of story is to strengthen the courage within us so it will serve us at our own moment of testing.

 

Tom Sawyer’s character Huck Finn chose to be a true friend to Jim and not turn him in as a runaway slave. His choice meant sacrifice and danger to himself, as well as going against the rules he had grown up with.  But he knew in his heart what was right, and he chose to do what was right.

 

In Tracy Chevalier’s Remarkable Creatures, two women make several fascinating discoveries, fossilized skeletons in the cliffs near their home in England.  Their discovery brings many trials.  Men try to take credit for their work.  Social class differences threaten their friendship.  They showed courage to pursue their passion against great odds.

 

Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet is a story of commitment and hope between childhood friends torn apart by race and war.  Henry is a Chinese American boy.  His only friend is Keiko, a Japanese American girl.  Henry’s father is nationalistic and strongly disapproves of the friendship.  Henry faces very difficult choices when Keiko’s family is sent to an internment camp during World War II.

 

I draw on these examples of courage when I am crafting my own characters for my middle grade novels.  Something changes in their life, setting them on a new course.  They find a quest, a wrong to be righted, a need to be filled.  They experience an irreversible change.  They meet someone or learn something.  It cannot be undone.  They make a decision to act, and that decision always costs them something.  They suffer hunger or pain.  They lose friends or family.  They go on anyway.  That is courage.  And that is what all of us do in some way every day.

 

“Whatever course you decide upon, there is always someone to tell you that you are wrong.  There are always difficulties arising which tempt you to believe that your critics are right.  To map out a course of action and follow it to an end requires courage.”  Ralph Waldo Emerson