Courage is Calling

Courage is Calling Plot Summary

Introduction

Courage stands as the most prized yet scarcest of virtues. Throughout history, the greatest moments have shared one common thread: the bravery of ordinary men and women who did what needed to be done, who said, "If not me, then who?" Courage—the first of the cardinal virtues—is not some finite resource distributed randomly by fortune or accessible only to a select few. It is something renewable, available to each of us at a moment's notice, in matters both monumental and mundane. Yet courage remains rare because fear holds us back. We tell ourselves we're not soldiers, that someone more qualified will step up, that now isn't a good time. We rationalize that playing it safe is wiser, more prudent. But if everyone thinks this way, where does it leave us? As Alexander Solzhenitsyn observed, "a decline in courage has been considered the first symptom of the end." The path to greatness—whether landing on the moon, securing civil rights, making a final stand at Thermopylae, or creating transcendent art—invariably requires ordinary people to muster extraordinary courage. Each of us faces our own Herculean crossroads, our own moments that call for bravery. Will we answer when that phone rings?

Chapter 1: Fear: The Enemy That Prevents Action

What prevents courage? What makes something so prized so rare? Fear. It manifests in all forms—from terror to apathy to hatred to playing it small—and stands as the enemy of courage. We find ourselves in a battle against fear, requiring us to study it, grapple with its causes and symptoms. This is why the Spartans built temples to fear: to keep it close, to see its power, to ward it off. The brave aren't without fear—no human is—but their ability to rise above it and master it makes them remarkable. Fear speaks with the powerful logic of self-interest. It tells us to wait, to hesitate, to consider all the terrible possibilities. It convinces us that we aren't enough, that we need more preparation, more certainty, more approval. It whispers that the odds are insurmountable, that others are watching and judging, that failure awaits. Fear creates phantasiai—immediate, precognitive impressions that aren't to be trusted. The most repeated phrase in the Bible is "Be not afraid," a warning not to let these impressions rule the day. The root of most fear is what other people will think of us. This paralyzes us, distorts our reality, and makes us behave in cowardly ways difficult to describe. We care so much about others' opinions that we're afraid of them even when we wouldn't be around to hear their judgment. We'd rather be complicit in a crime than speak up, die in a pandemic than be the only one wearing a mask, stay in a job we hate than explain why we quit to do something less certain. We'd rather follow a silly trend than question it, lose our life savings to a burst bubble than seem stupid for sitting on the sidelines. The obstacles, enemies, and critics blocking our path aren't as numerous as we imagine. Ulysses S. Grant learned this lesson early in his military career when, terrified by what he thought was a large wolf pack in East Texas, he discovered only two wolves. Later, as a lieutenant colonel, Grant was again afraid when approaching Confederate forces, but upon reaching a hill, he found the enemy had fled. "It occurred to me at once that Harris had been as much afraid of me as I had of him," Grant wrote. "This was a view of the question I had never taken before; but it was one I never forgot afterwards." We overestimate our opponents and underestimate ourselves. Our vague, undefined fears hold tremendous power over us. That's why we must attack these faulty premises and root them out like the cancers they are. We must confront what we're afraid of through "fear setting"—defining and articulating our nightmares, anxieties, and doubts. The ancient Stoics called this premeditatio malorum, the deliberate meditation on possible evils. By defining, articulating, and wrestling with what can happen, we make fears less scary and less dangerous. When downside is articulated, it can be weighed against upside. When wolves are counted, there are fewer of them. Mountains become molehills, monsters become mere men. When fear is vague, it deters us; when explored, it loses power. We were afraid because we didn't know. We were vulnerable because we didn't know. But now we do. And with awareness, we can proceed.

Chapter 2: Courage: Answering the Call Despite Obstacles

Courage is the management of and triumph over fear. It's the decision—in a moment of peril or day in and day out—to take ownership and assert agency over a situation, over yourself, over the fate that everyone else has resigned themselves to. You can curse the darkness, or you can light a candle. You can wait for someone else to save you, or you can decide to deliver yourself. This is the critical turning point, the moment of truth. Will you be brave? Will you put yourself out there? Consider Charles de Gaulle, who saved France through sheer determination. As his country fell to Germany in June 1940, as its leaders quietly negotiated surrender, de Gaulle boarded a small plane to England. He was not France's elected leader, had no royal blood, was not even its highest-ranking general. Yet he alone refused to give up, refused to let his country give up. "I tell you nothing is lost for France," he declared in his famous BBC broadcast. "The same means that conquered us can one day bring us victory." De Gaulle had the courage to call for the ball—to accept the burden of leadership, to resist hopelessness and choose instead the path of a fighter. "The intervention of human will in the chain of events has something irrevocable about it," he wrote before the war. "Responsibility presses down with such weight that few men are capable of bearing it alone." This was a family that mastered fear—de Gaulle and his wife survived thirty serious assassination attempts. After one, their car riddled with machine-gun fire, windows shattered, all tires blown out, Yvonne emerged unscathed and calmly inquired about her groceries in the trunk. Courage requires preparation. "Know-how is a help," opened the Army Life handbook given to millions of American soldiers in World War II. Training replaces fear with competence. When Roman troops were trapped in the Caudine Forks in 321 BC, surrounded by insurmountable obstacles and enemies, they began building fortifications. Their action might have seemed pointless, but it gave them mental comfort and occupied their time. They let their training take over, finding solace and strength in it. The enemy, watching this strange behavior, began to jeer and taunt, but soon made terms with the Romans rather than risk attacking such a disciplined foe. Courage often begins with small actions. Theodore Roosevelt hesitated before inviting Booker T. Washington to the White House for dinner in 1901—the first time a Black man had dined as a sitting president's guest. He hesitated because he was scared of what his southern relatives might think, what newspapers would say, what racist voters might do. "The very fact that I felt a moment's qualm on inviting him because of his color made me ashamed of myself," Roosevelt said, "and made me hasten to send the invitation." Our fears point us like self-indicting arrows toward the right thing to do. Sometimes courage requires us to just go. As Jocko Willink says, to get over fear, you go. When Charles Lindbergh prepared to attempt the first nonstop transatlantic flight, there were countless reasons not to try. No one had ever done it. He had never flown over water before or stayed up the consecutive hours it would take. Some of his rivals had crashed or disappeared mid-flight. Yet on May 19, 1927, despite doubts and hesitations, he took off and made history. Life is risky. As Dylan Thomas said, each day is "always touch-and-go." No amount of corporate ass-covering will protect you from scary things. We are already fugitives from the law of averages, already marked for death from birth. Courage requires us to own our actions. The buck stops with you—always. "The willingness to accept responsibility for one's own life," Joan Didion observed, "is the source from which self-respect springs." After ordering the disastrous charge of the Light Brigade, Lord Lucan and Lord Cardigan tried to escape blame: "I do not intend to bear the slightest particle of responsibility," one declared. They could face merciless bullets but not criticism. True leaders own what happens after they decide to go. No excuses. No exceptions.

Chapter 3: The Heroic: Transcending Self-Interest for Greater Good

If courage—moral and physical—is the act of putting your ass on the line, then the definition of the heroic is very simple: risking oneself for someone else. It's putting it on the line not just for your own benefit but for the benefit of someone, something, some larger cause. Is this not one of the greatest expressions of humanity? In those situations where real danger lurks, where hope has disappeared, nobody cries for a manager or logician. They cry for action, for a hero—for someone to save them, to step up and do what we cannot do for ourselves. The highest expression of this heroism can be seen in the 300 Spartans who stood against the Persian invasion at Thermopylae in 480 BC. As the Persian king Xerxes sought subjugation and revenge, bearing down on Greece with an enormous army, some Greek city-states surrendered or took bribes to switch sides. The future of Western civilization hung in the balance. A small army led by 300 Spartans and their ruler, Leonidas, rushed to the "Hot Gates" to hold back the Persians as long as they could. If they could make a strong stand, perhaps Greece could be inspired to fight on. When Xerxes tried to bribe the Spartans, Leonidas replied: "The Greeks have learned from their fathers to gain lands, not by cowardice but by valor." When asked to surrender their arms, the Spartans answered: "Come and take them." For days they fought heroically against overwhelming odds, knowing they would not survive. "You will do your part, and I will do mine," Leonidas told the Persian king. "It is your part to kill; it is mine to die, but not in fear: yours to banish me; mine to depart without sorrow." Their sacrifice was not merely courageous but selfless. Leonidas could have survived if he chose. The Spartans could have ruled all of Greece. Nevertheless, they went and died so that all Greeks could be free. So that we could be free. As Steven Pressfield concludes in his novel about this battle, the opposite of fear is not fearlessness but love. Love for one another. Love for ideas. Love for your country. Love for the vulnerable and weak. Love for the next generation. This profound, marrow-deep love allows one to rise above self-preservation and achieve true greatness. This selflessness requires sacrifice. James Stockdale, as a prisoner in the "Hanoi Hilton" during the Vietnam War, used the razor his captors gave him to slash his own face before a propaganda filming. Later, as torture of his comrades escalated, he slit his wrists in a suicide attempt. "The last thing the North Vietnamese needed was me dead," he later wrote. "Prison torture, as we had known it in Hanoi, ended for everybody that night." Stockdale was not fighting for himself, but for his men. When the guards tried to pit prisoners against each other, they found that the men believed deeply in an idea as old as scripture: "You are your brother's keeper." The heroic often means making people bigger, raising them up from what is low. Longfellow captured Florence Nightingale's true heroism: "Honor to those whose words or deeds / Thus help us in our daily needs, / And by their overflow / Raise us from what is low." She made people bigger. She made them better. The Spartans made Greece bigger, spilling their blood to glue an alliance of Greek states. Even de Gaulle's critics admitted he willed France to stand tall at her lowest point. Heroes make an impact and difference for others. Success is not their motivation. "Happy is the man who can make others better," Seneca writes, "not merely when he is in their company, but even when he is in their thoughts." Even if this kills us, even if we're not around to enjoy the fruits of our sacrifice because it got us fired or worse, it's still worth it. Our memory lives on in the minds of witnesses. Our duty was never just to be the best ourselves, but to help others realize their best. Even if, as is sometimes the case, this effort comes at our own expense.

Chapter 4: The Moral Imperative of Standing Up

One of the conspirators against Nero was caught and interrogated: Why did you do this? "Because," the soldier replied to the emperor, "it was the only way I could help you." This captures the moral imperative that drives those who stand up when others remain silent. They care too much to remain quiet. They care about "it" more than they care about themselves, and to say nothing or do nothing would actually cause more harm than whatever discomfort comes from speaking out. When a young assistant spoke up to Secretary of State Dean Acheson during the Korean War, worried that vague orders for MacArthur would create an opportunity for needless escalation, Acheson dismissed him: "For God's sake, how old are you? Are you willing to take on the Joint Chiefs?" The assistant, just thirty-two, was not. So he took his objections no further. Just days later, the Chinese, triggered by MacArthur's aggressive moves, flooded troops into Korea. World War III almost began. As Marcus Aurelius reminded himself long ago, "you can also commit injustice by doing nothing." The uncomfortable reality is that sometimes the right thing is a kamikaze mission. Sometimes our lance must be broken against the shield. Sometimes we must be willing to lose the job, lose the client, lose our good standing, break from our friends, make the sacrifice. Of course, that's scary. We are up against our fear and instinct for self-preservation. But we cultivate courage in our lives for a reason—not just to be more successful or experience things on the other side of fear, but to do important work that people are counting on. Dietrich Bonhoeffer made it safely to America in 1939, escaping Hitler's Germany. Yet almost immediately, he began to have regrets. Every thought was of Germany, of the people he'd left behind, of what use he might have been. "I have come to the conclusion that I made a mistake in coming to America," he explained. "I must live through this difficult period in our national history with the people of Germany." He returned, knowing he was likely heading to the gallows. He would eventually be arrested, imprisoned, and hanged for conspiring against Hitler—having quite nearly succeeded at assassinating history's greatest monster. Martin Luther King Jr. got away to Atlanta during the bus boycott. He was free and safe. His father and others pleaded for him to remain there, leading the cause from afar. "I must go back to Montgomery," King told them. "I would be a coward to stay away. I could not live with myself if I stayed here hiding while my brothers and sisters were being arrested in Montgomery." After escaping danger, he deliberately went "back to the valley." His mission obligated him, and his faith guided him. Why didn't these figures stay where it was safe? The answer is that they believed they could do more good by staying than going, by returning than living in exile. They were willing to run the risks. They knew how the powers would respond, and they were brave enough to take their stands anyway. As Paul Robeson, when asked why he didn't flee a racist America for a more welcoming Europe, responded: "Because my father was a slave, and my people died to build this country, and I am going to stay right here and have a part of it [...] And no Fascist-minded people will drive me from it. Is that clear?"

Chapter 5: Cultivating Courage as a Daily Practice

We can't just hope to be brave when it counts. Courage must be something we cultivate. No athlete just expects to hit the game-winning shot—they practice it thousands of times. They take that shot in scrimmages, in pickup games, alone in the gym as they count down the clock in their head. How do you expect to do the big things that scare you—that scare others—if you haven't practiced them? How can you trust that you'll step forward when the stakes are high when you regularly don't do that even when the stakes are low? Harry Burns was an ordinary politician in Tennessee in 1920. He had no history of bold stands, having voted twice to table the discussion of women's suffrage. Yet on August 18, when his "aye" vote ratified the Nineteenth Amendment nationwide, giving the vote to twenty million women, he showed unexpected courage. We can contrast this with John McCain's decisive vote against repealing the Affordable Care Act almost exactly one hundred years later. Though both actions took just a "few seconds of courage," McCain felt far less trepidation. He was not conflicted or questioning himself because he had made a career of surprising people, of sticking with principle even when it wasn't in his best interest. Burns closed his eyes and leapt into the unknown, half-convinced he was committing career suicide. He'd never done anything like this before. Were it not for a note from his mother, he probably wouldn't have been able to face that moment of fear and doubt. McCain's mother—still alive at age 105 at the time of the vote—didn't need to remind her son because she had raised him to do the harder thing from birth. McCain had made courage a habit, as we must do. You can see it in his eyes as he walks away having made his decision—there was pleasure in it. He loved delivering that blow, right in the face of his own party's leadership. Aristotle described virtue as a kind of craft, something to pursue just as one pursues the mastery of any profession or skill. "We become builders by building and we become harpists by playing the harp," he writes. "Similarly, then, we become just by doing just actions, temperate by doing temperate actions, brave by doing brave actions." Virtue is something we do. It's something we choose. Not once, but constantly, repeatedly. That's why we need to make courage a habit through daily practice. "Always do what you are afraid to do," Ralph Waldo Emerson said. William James wrote that we want to "make our nervous system our ally instead of our enemy." When we make things automatic, there is less for us to think about—less room to do the wrong thing. There is no one, he said, more miserable than the person "in whom nothing is habitual but indecision." In fact, no one is more miserable than the person who has made cop-outs and cowardice their go-to decision. Not only does their daily life suffer, but they fail themselves and everyone else in the big moments. The best approach is to start with little things. We can try the cold shower. We can volunteer to address the rowdy audience. We can put on the silly costume to please our kids and not care what anyone thinks. We can admit when we don't know something, risking eye rolls and condescension. We can agree to try what we have never tried before. And this way we know, when it counts, what to do. We know what we will do. The brave thing. The right thing. The principled thing. Whatever the consequences.

Chapter 6: The Selflessness Required for True Heroism

Heroism is not just courage but a special form of courage—the willingness to give, perhaps give everything, for someone else. Some find it baffling. "I don't get it," said a particularly craven leader standing in a military cemetery. "What was in it for them?" For the transactional, cowardly, and selfish, the bafflement is sincere. Why would anyone give up their life for someone else? What kind of deal is that? The logic of self-preservation is strong, especially in those with pragmatic streaks. It takes a stronger person to override it. A strange paradox exists: Those without a strong sense of self are unlikely to be brave, yet the highest form of bravery demands a kind of selflessness that is, in some cases, suicidal. This may be beyond our limits of understanding outside the moment in which it occurs—like those feats of superhuman physical strength where mothers lift cars off small children. Yet we know how essential this is to our survival as a species, let alone as the good guys. There's a reason our greatest art celebrates it, that the names of these heroes remain touchstones centuries after their deeds. You hear it in Medal of Honor acceptance speeches: "I just did what anyone would have done." If that were actually true, we wouldn't make such a big deal of it. True heroism shames and humbles us. It moves us beyond reason—because it came from something beyond reason. Bertrand Russell once said, "Better Red than dead," suggesting life was more important than dignity and no principle, not even freedom, was worth more than self-preservation. The philosopher John Stuart Mill would concede that war was ugly, but "the decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth a war, is much worse." You have to care enough to draw the line somewhere, and the failure to do this is ultimately far uglier than most of the excesses of history. Deep down we know there are things worse than dying. It's why we admire heroes who fought and challenged, gambled and sacrificed for what they believed in. "We should cherish the body with the greatest care," Seneca said. "We should also be prepared, when reason, self-respect, and duty demand the sacrifice, to deliver it even to the flames." When we ask, "But what if...?" worrying about the cost to ourselves, a hero doesn't think about that. They accept the bill that comes due for doing the right thing. Consider the heroism of ordinary people: The nameless blacks who were beaten, who lost jobs, had loans called in but still registered to vote anyway. The countless couples who married interracially in defiance of the Nazis or apartheid. Lori Gilbert-Kaye, a sixty-year-old mother who threw herself in front of her rabbi during a mass shooting, shielding him from death with her body and life. Leonard Roy Harmon, a black cook on a Navy ship who used his body to protect evacuated wounded at Guadalcanal, dying for a country still illegally depriving him of his rights. Wilfred Owen, the poet who returned to active service in World War I after his friend had been seriously wounded. Like Russell, Owen was antiwar, but felt someone should document its horrors. He died in battle just a week before the Armistice. Maya Moore made it to the top of her field in the WNBA with four championship rings, six All-Star appearances, a scoring title, and more. Then she walked away—not for money or a break, but to free a man unjustly behind bars. Her decision meant walking away from millions of dollars, from being on television, from the prime years of her career. What was right had the potential to cost her everything... and she did it anyway. "Character," de Gaulle reflected at the end of his life, "is above all the ability to disregard insults or abandonment by one's own people. One must be willing to lose everything. There is no such thing as half a risk."

Chapter 7: How Courage Creates Meaning and Impact

After being branded by war, Audie Murphy, the most decorated American soldier of World War II, made a commitment: "I will learn to look at life through uncynical eyes, to have faith, to know love. I will learn to work in peace as in war. And finally—finally, like countless others, I will learn to live again." This captures the transformative power of courage—its ability to create meaning out of suffering and impact beyond oneself. In one of Hemingway's most beautiful passages, he writes: "If people bring so much courage to this world the world has to kill them to break them, so of course it kills them. The world breaks every one and afterward many are strong at the broken places. But those that will not break, it kills." The world is a cruel and harsh place, undefeated for at least four and a half billion years. From entire species of apex predators to Hercules to Hemingway himself, it has been home to incredibly strong creatures. And where are they now? Gone. Too many of them before their time. Because they confused strength with resilience. Stoicism—deep courage—is there to help you recover when the world breaks you and, in the recovering, to make you stronger at a much more profound level. The Stoic heals by focusing on what they can control: Their response. The repairing. The learning of lessons. Preparing for the future. Making a difference for others. Requesting help. Changing. Sacrificing for a greater good. This concept appears in Japanese kintsugi, where masters repair broken plates and cups, fusing broken pieces with gold or silver lacquer. The scars of a break become something beautiful. That's the question life sometimes asks: Death or kintsugi? Will you find a way to become stronger at the broken places? Or will you cling to old ways until you shatter? A hero gets back up. They heal. They grow. For themselves and others. Churchill was not only a prisoner of war in his youth, but at the height of his political career was driven out of public life. For nearly ten years he languished at his estate outside London—or so his enemies thought. In fact, he was reading, writing, resting, making valuable contacts, waiting for his moment. "Every prophet has to come from civilization," Churchill explained, "but every prophet has to go into the wilderness. He must have a strong impression of a complex society...and he must serve periods of isolation and meditation. This is the process by which psychic dynamite is made." The heroes we need must go through this wilderness. How long are you willing to be misunderstood? How long can you stand alone? Are you willing to be the only one in your company to go on record? The only one in your party to voice criticism? What are you willing to put up with to be true to what you believe? To do what you need to do? For selfish reasons, Churchill could have quit. Out of spite, he could have retreated to his own pursuits. He did not. When England finally called, he wasn't just ready to answer—he had readied himself for precisely the crisis they needed him to solve. C.S. Lewis wrote, "Courage is not simply one of the virtues, but the form of every virtue at the testing point." Try living with moderation. Try being honest. Try pursuing knowledge. Try doing any of these things in a world that has forsaken wisdom and self-discipline and justice, and you'll see how far you get without courage. You will be mocked, criticized, undermined, impeded. Your bank balance will approach zero. All of this is a test. Without courage, you won't pass. The mob will get you...or you will become part of the mob. The strain will break you...or you will break your commitments. In East of Eden, John Steinbeck concludes that the most powerful phrase in Christianity is timshel, which he interprets not as "Thou shalt" but "Thou mayest." "Here is individual responsibility and the invention of conscience," he reflected. "You can if you will but it is up to you." Whether from the Bible, Hercules, East of Eden, or Faust, the message is the same: We have a choice. We choose between cowardice and courage, virtue and vice. Courage calls us in our fear. It calls us to each act of bravery and perseverance our duties require. And it calls us beyond ourselves to a greater common good.

Summary

Courage operates at the nexus of fear and action—not as the absence of fear, but as the triumph over it. Throughout this exploration, we've seen how courage manifests across three dimensions: first in conquering our personal fears, then in answering the call to brave action despite obstacles, and finally in transcending self-interest for something greater. The essential insight emerges that courage isn't merely an isolated virtue but the foundational element that makes all other virtues possible at their testing point. What distinguishes this perspective on courage is its insistence on both inward and outward dimensions. True courage begins with facing our internal fears—the phantasiai that distort our perceptions—and extends to taking responsibility for our actions and their consequences. More profoundly, it culminates in the selflessness that transforms mere bravery into heroism. When we understand courage as this progressive journey from personal fear management to selfless sacrifice, we recognize its unique power to create meaning amidst suffering and impact beyond ourselves. For anyone engaged in leadership, ethical decision-making, or simply navigating a world that incentivizes cowardice, this framework offers both a challenging mirror and an inspiring beacon for how to meet the moments that define us.

About Author

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Ryan Holiday

Ryan Holiday is media strategist for notorious clients like Tucker Max and Dov Charney. After dropping out of college at 19 to apprentice under the strategist Robert Greene, he went on to advise many bestselling authors and multi-platinum musicians. He is the Director of Marketing at American Apparel, where his work in advertising was internationally known. His strategies are used as case studies by Twitter, YouTube, and Google, and have been written about in AdAge, the New York Times, Gawker, and Fast Company. He is the author is *Trust Me, I'm Lying: Confessions of a Media Manipulator*, which is due out in July. He currently lives in New Orleans, with his rebellious puppy, Hanno.

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