Courage in the Face of Coronavirus

 To say this virus and lock downs have created a lot of uncertainty would be an understatement. Daily through media, mainstream and social, we see video after video and article after article of how bad things are, how bad things could get, and how bad it has gotten in other places in the world.

On top of that we have governments releasing PSA’s accusing us of being murderers if we dare to leave our homes. All this generates a large amount of fear. Frankly if you are not afraid on some level I would think you were not human.

Yet in the presence of all this fear and uncertainty it is not how we feel that matters but how we act. Do you give in to your passions and allow the fear to dictate to you how you should behave? Or do you pick up your reason and struggle with those passions in order to live virtuously with courage?

Locked Down

To many of us the thought of being locked in our homes screams as a violation to our fundamental natural rights. No one can force us to stay home in a free country. This understandably could be seen simply as the excuse for petty tyrants to finally come out of the woodwork.

We also worry about once this is over and this line has been crossed, what is to stop something else simply being called an emergency and forcing us to stay home, say on an election day? In the face of these lock downs we must act with courage.

We need to understand that most Americans will not tolerate this for a long period of time. That our elected representatives will always have to run for reelection and that the true power of our Republic rests with the people. We will comply with these stay home orders but must courageously voice our opposition to them and demonstrate our dedication to that opposition once this pandemic winds down.

Reopening

We will reopen at some point and when we do it is understandable that people will be afraid to leave their homes and return to their lives. This is a natural feeling because we have been told that there is an invisible enemy lurking behind every tree, living on every surface that can not only infect and kill you but will infect and kill everyone you ever loved as well.

We need to understand that even for something as serious as the Coronavirus this feeling has been blown out of proportion by media outlets trying to sell ads and get click, by politicians trying to push pet projects through attached to relief bills, and by social media personalities trying to gain fame and attention.

Once we do start to open again we must act with courage, especially those of us who are young and relatively healthy. Go out to eat, go to the beach, and go out to our parks. While we should learn from this virus, we must not fundamentally alter our way of life. Once we do that we have made the choice to live out of fear and not from a place of courage.

Courage Itself

Courage is a virtue, one that in our modern risk adverse world we are rapidly losing. Too often do we allow mobs of people on Twitter to dictate to us what we should think or how we should behave.

But courage is not a virtue without limits. An excess of courage is foolhardiness and a deficiency of courage is cowardice. Yet to the cowardly the courageous seem foolhardy and to the foolhardy the courageous seem cowardly. So how do we judge if our actions are courageous, cowardly or foolhardy?

Our courage must serve our happiness. This is not the modern version of happiness, which is more closely related to pleasure than happiness. Instead happiness here means the positive feeling you get from doing something meaningful and good.

An example of this is as things open up and grocery stores get crowded again, you go grocery shopping for your grandparents and deliver the food to their house. The virtue of courage is a fine line and one that moves constantly. Something that is courageous one day could be foolhardy or cowardly the next day.

Practicing courage every day will etch that habit into your character and allow you to act with courage when called upon to do so in stressful situations. So I urge everyone to act with courage in the face of this terror known as Coronavirus. They do not call America the home of the brave for nothing, now is our chance to earn that title.