Courage: noun; The ability to do an act that frightens one. The dictionary is partially true. Courage can be clarified as bravery in the face of danger or as strength in difficult situations. But this is not the whole truth. Courage is more than strength or the ability to ignore fear. It’s the building block of every good action, every kind gesture, every act of love. To me, courage is more of a natural response to love. How can you love someone you don’t have the courage to care for? How can you truly serve your country without being proud of it? The answer is simple: You can’t. Military members serve because they have the courage to defend their country, their family, their homes. Soldiers cannot march into battle without a reason to fight. Children can’t grow up without the courage to learn. It takes courage to do anything; to learn, to fight, to grow. If one gives into fear every time something new or difficult arises, life would have no meaning. Being able to act happy in fearful or difficult situations, that is courage. Not showing strength, but by not allowing fear to cloud one’s life.
Courage is not just putting away or ignoring fear. If everyone ignored fear, the human race would be invincible. But rather, courage is the habit of transforming fear into motivation, pain into a reason to fight. I use the word habit because courage cannot just be classified as a virtue, or a concept, or a noun. If you are courageous once, wouldn’t you have the motivation to do so again? Wouldn’t proving to yourself you can be courageous enough to continue fighting? I think so. The passion of 231,000 men led to the United States. One can be led by passion, but can only act upon it with courage. When a military member makes an act or decision to serve their country, it has an effect on the others in their lives. The same courage it takes for a soldier to fight in a foreign country is the same courage that drives me to raise my hand in class, or to present ideas to my classmates. Because I’ve seen so many people make sacrifices for their country, so many people show courage in the face of hardship, I can now go about my life knowing how to act in the face of fear, and continue to chase my dreams. They say military kids are tough, but in reality, we’ve just learned to recognise the courage of the people in our daily lives in a different way. The truth is, every person has courage, whether they are a military member or child or civilian.
I realize that the prompt of this essay is “How has courage shaped your life?”. But I cannot speak of my own experiences as a military child without also relating to others like me. Every military child has had experiences where they are forced to show courage in the midst of fear. We all understand that our loved ones are not leaving us behind, but are willing to sacrafice everything to protect us, our friends, even people they don’t know. If they can do that, then we can be brave too, and live our life courageously for them.