A New Way to Approach Courage

Courage is similar to happiness in that everybody wants it and apparently, there are hundreds of different ways to get it. There are countless articles on ‘5 ways to be more courageous at work’ or ‘8 steps to get courage.’ This is a story on how my dog taught me what courage is and how I realized how to approach courage more than 5 years later.

My dog is a small Maltese, kind of like the picture above. His name is Harry. My family got him when I was in middle school. One day, when I was still in high school, my family was in the living room together and my mom brought up how she found it so cute that Harry roams the house late at night, as if he’s guarding the house. We all let out a collective ‘aww,’ gave Harry a few pats and didn’t give it much thought.

One Friday night, I decided to finally get caught up on ‘The Breaking Bad.’ I turned off the lights, had my movie snacks in hand, and plopped on the bed. After a few hours, around 3 am, just as I was about to fall asleep I heard the familiar tap tap tap of my dog’s paws against the wooden floor. I could tell he was coming from my parents room and making his way to my sister’s. He stopped briefly in front of her door before making his way to mine. tap tap tap. When he got to my door, I heard him sniff through the small crack between the floor and the door. I continued to wait as I heard him make his way downstairs and continue his journey of tap tap taps across our first floor. I remember I just froze on my bed, with this weird facial expression where my eyebrows were furrowed down in confusion and my lips stretched up in a smile. Was Harry really checking to see if we were all at home safe and making sure there were no intruders? For the rest of that week, I stayed up to see if Harry would walk around the house again. He did. And my belief that my dog was trying to guard our house grew stronger and stronger. At first, I felt a sense of joy and pride. My dog must feel as if he is a part of our family and that we’ve done a great job caring for him. But one night, I thought of something that made my heart drop.

My dog is a pretty small dog. You might have inferred that from the picture but it’s important to know. It’s important because the question that shot through my head was “What can this little guy even do? If he is really trying to protect us, what does he think he can do against an intruder?” I mean, he’s so small that a 5th grader could send him flying across the room. And yet here he is, on the look out everyday for potential danger. A small little white furball.

My heart sank to the floor. My dog, as silly as he is, knows how big other humans are. He’s seen the postman, the UPS guy, friends and family. But again, here was my small little dog making his rounds across our house trying to protect us giants from other giants. And the more I thought about it, the more it felt like my heart was breaking. Breaking at the image of him getting hurt by an actual intruder. Breaking at the love and loyalty I felt from him. Breaking at how something so small has the courage to put himself out there.

What I learned then was an example of courage that would stay with me for a lifetime. But it didn’t really teach me anything more than what I already knew. It wasn’t until this year when I was able to piece this example and an intuitive approach to courage.

When people talk about developing courage, they encourage you to try something new, something out of your comfort zone. They say to understand fear is just chemicals in your brain. Sure. But I’ve always believed that courage, like happiness, is more natural and instinctual. It’s a basic emotion that spurs out of you when something disturbs what you hold dear. We’ve all seen a movie or a YouTube clip about a quiet kid who surprisingly stands up against the bullies for his friend. You might chalk it up to anger or love but this is a simple cause and effect. An external force disturbed what you held as important to you and as a result, your conscience brings forth your courage to defend it. The only problem these days is that most people have lost touch with what is truly important . We have turned into a nation that cares about everything. We care about what diet we have, we care about what clothes we wear, we care that there’s so much traffic, we care about what this person’s doing or what that person’s doing. Our attention is so scattered that we’ve lost touch of our priorities and we live aimlessly devoting so much of our thoughts to unimportant things. And when your attention is spread so thinly throughout your day, what will call you to action?

Let’s go back to Harry for a moment. He doesn’t care what car he goes in when he goes to the vet. He doesn’t care whether the neighbors dog barked at him that one time. He doesn’t care whether the robber that walks through that door is 6'4 or 4'6. To him, what really matters is his family and so he protects it.

Start taking control over what you give your attention to and live life deliberately ‘handing out’ your thoughts. When you do, two things will happen. First, what you find important will show themselves naturally. The many things that might have stressed you before, suddenly lose their control. Your day might seem lighter or work may be less painful. Second, when you realize what the few things that are truly important to you are, when your whole heart is behind a few people or ideas, you’ll find that courage will follow you naturally.

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