The narrow doorway

What does it cost to do the thing you are afraid of? And what is left of you, after?

There is a moment, before any act of courage, when the body knows before the mind does. The throat tightens. The hand hesitates on the door. Something in you has already understood that whatever happens next will require you to spend something — comfort, standing, safety, the good opinion of people whose opinion you have always wanted — and that you may not get it back.

The old books are full of this moment. They disagree, often sharply, about what to do inside it. But they agree that it is the doorway through which a life becomes serious.

The rock and the reed

The first thing the traditions try to teach is how not to be moved. "As a solid rock is not shaken by the wind," says the Dhammapada, "wise people falter not amidst blame and praise." ^[1] Marcus Aurelius, writing privately to himself in a military camp, returns to the same image again and again. When others curse you, he writes, your mind may still "continue pure, prudent, temperate, just," like a fountain into which dirt has been thrown but which clears itself and runs sweet again. ^[2] The Confucian Analects put it more bluntly: "The commander of the forces of a large state may be carried off, but the will of even a common man cannot be taken from him." ^[3]

This is courage as steadiness. It assumes that the worst thing assault can do is not to wound the body but to disorder the soul — and that the disorder is, finally, optional. "Those things that are without my understanding," Marcus writes, "are nothing to it at all." ^[4]

But against this granite picture, the Tao Te Ching sets a stranger one. "There is nothing in the world more soft and weak than water," it observes, "and yet for attacking things that are firm and strong there is nothing that can take precedence of it." ^[5] "Man at his birth is supple and weak; at his death, firm and strong... firmness and strength are the concomitants of death; softness and weakness, the concomitants of life." ^[6] Lao Tzu lists his three treasures, and the first of them is not steel but gentleness: "With that gentleness I can be bold." ^[7]

The Gospel of Matthew enters here, almost casually: "Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth." ^[8] Even Marcus, the Stoic general, concedes the point: "meekness is a thing unconquerable, if it be true and natural, and not affected or hypocritical." ^[9]

So the first picture wavers. Is courage the rock or the river? Perhaps the answer is that both refuse the same thing — to be deformed by what presses on them — but one refuses by holding shape and the other by flowing around. Both, in any case, require something the panicked self does not possess: a center that is not for sale.

The inward war

Before any of this can apply outwardly, every tradition insists, there is a prior fight. "He who overcomes others is strong; he who overcomes himself is mighty," says the Tao Te Ching. ^[10] The Dhammapada makes the same point in a quieter register: "Self is the lord of self, who else could be the lord? With self well subdued, a man finds a lord such as few can find." ^[11]

The Bhagavad Gita, narrated on the eve of a battle Arjuna does not want to fight, offers one of the more violent images for this inner work. The mind that follows the senses, Krishna warns, is like "a ship in waves of whirlwind" that "drives to wreck and death"; only "him who holds his mastery, shows wisdom perfect." ^[12] The Dhammapada is gentler, almost coaxing: "Be not thoughtless, watch your thoughts! Draw yourself out of the evil way, like an elephant sunk in mud." ^[13]

What unites these voices is a suspicion that most of what we call cowardice is not, in the end, about lions or tyrants. It is about appetite. About wanting to be liked. About not being able to bear discomfort for long enough to do what we already know is right. Marcus locates the source of action not in events but in something more intimate: "that which is hidden within every man's dogmata, and opinions: That, that is rhetoric; that is life; that (to speak true) is man himself." ^[14]

If this is true, then the work of courage begins long before any visible test arrives. By the time the door is in front of you, you have either trained for it or you have not.

When silence would be easier

And yet the visible tests do arrive. Pirkei Avot collapses an entire ethics into three questions: "If I am not for myself, who is for me? But if I am for my own self only, what am I? And if not now, when?" ^[15] Elsewhere the same tractate offers a sharper instruction for the moment when no one else will act: "In a place where there are no men, strive to be a man." ^[16]

The Qur'an preserves the memory of Abraham telling his own father and people, "Verily I am clear of what ye worship, save Him who hath created me." ^[17] It is a small line carrying enormous weight: the willingness to break with the people who made you, when what they ask of you is wrong. To Pharaoh's threats, the sorcerers who came to believe answer with what may be the purest statement of nerve in scripture: "doom the doom thou wilt: Thou canst only doom as to this present life." ^[18]

Confucius, less dramatic, gives the same standard a daily shape. The complete man, he says, is one "who in the view of gain, thinks of righteousness; who in the view of danger is prepared to give up his life; and who does not forget an old agreement however far back it extends."[^canon:83ea20bf-e559-4f4a-91af-8eedfd65d8a6) The officer, he says elsewhere, "may not be without breadth of mind and vigorous endurance. His burden is heavy and his course is long... Only with death does his course stop;-- is it not long?" ^[19]

Whoever wrote the Twenty-Third Psalm knew that this kind of long obedience walks through dark country: "Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me." ^[20] So did the writer of the Twenty-Seventh: "The LORD is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear?" ^[21] The fear is not denied. It is simply outweighed.

The mockery, the misreading

Much of what people call courage is, in fact, the willingness to be misunderstood. The Dhammapada notes the trap with a tired exactness: "They blame him who sits silent, they blame him who speaks much, they also blame him who says little; there is no one on earth who is not blamed." ^[22] Since blame is unavoidable, the question is only which blame you can live with.

Marcus, again, with that almost monastic patience: "Will any contemn me? let him look to that, upon what grounds he does it: my care shall be that I may never be found either doing or speaking anything that doth truly deserve contempt. Will any hate me? let him look to that. I for my part will be kind and loving unto all." ^[23] He goes further: when accused, look into the accuser's mind, see what kind of person they are, and then — astonishingly — "love them still, for by nature they are thy friends." ^[24]

The Qur'an gives counsel of the same shape: "endure what they say with patience, and depart from them with a decorous departure." ^[25] Not retort. Not collapse. A decorous departure.

The Stoic injunction is simpler still: "Think thyself fit and worthy to speak, or to do anything that is according to nature, and let not the reproach, or report of some that may ensue upon it, ever deter thee." ^[26] Note what this is not. It is not an instruction to be brave because you are certain to be vindicated. It is an instruction to act rightly whether or not you are.

The cost, named honestly

The traditions are not, on the whole, romantic about this. Confucius refuses to take with him on campaign the man "who will unarmed attack a tiger, or cross a river without a boat, dying without any regret." His associate must be "the man who proceeds to action full of solicitude, who is fond of adjusting his plans, and then carries them into execution." ^[27] Courage without forethought, he warns, is no virtue at all; valor without righteousness produces, in the powerful, insubordination, and in the weak, robbery. ^[28] To "lead an uninstructed people to war," he says elsewhere, "is to throw them away." ^[29]

The Tao Te Ching, addressing commanders, says the skillful one "strikes a decisive blow, and stops. He does not dare (by continuing his operations) to assert and complete his mastery... he strikes it as a matter of necessity; he strikes it, but not from a wish for mastery." ^[30] The Dhammapada distinguishes the just man from the violent one: not he who carries a matter by force, but "he who distinguishes both right and wrong, who is learned and leads others, not by violence, but by law and equity." ^[31]

And then there is the Bhagavad Gita, which refuses the easier exits. Arjuna, on the field of battle, wants to lay down his weapons. Krishna will not let him. "Arise, thou Son of Kunti! brace thine arm for conflict, nerve thy heart to meet — as things alike to thee — pleasure or pain, profit or ruin, victory or defeat: so minded, gird thee to the fight, for so thou shalt not sin!" ^[32] "Cut then atwain with sword of wisdom, Son of Bharata! This doubt that binds thy heart-beats! cleave the bond born of thy ignorance! Be bold and wise! Give thyself to the field with me! Arise!" ^[33]

It is a hard text. It does not pretend that doing the right thing will feel right, or look right, or leave the doer intact. It claims only that there is such a thing as duty, and that flinching from it is its own kind of harm.

Set against this, the First Letter of John offers a quieter, almost unbearable measure: "Hereby perceive we the love of God, because he laid down his life for us: and we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren." ^[34] The Letter of James adds: "Blessed is the man that endureth temptation: for when he is tried, he shall receive the crown of life." ^[35]

What none of these voices promises is that the cost will be small. What they promise, in their various idioms, is that the cost is the point — that there is no version of a good life from which the narrow doorway has been removed.

After

Marcus, near the end of his first book, records what he learned from his teacher Claudius Maximus: "in all things to endeavour to have power of myself, and in nothing to be carried about; to be cheerful and courageous in all sudden chances and accidents, as in sicknesses: to love mildness, and moderation, and gravity: and to do my business, whatsoever it be, thoroughly, and without querulousness." ^[36]

That last word — without querulousness, without complaint — may be the hardest part. Most of us can summon nerve once. Doing what is right and then not making a great noise about it afterward is a different and rarer thing. The Analects says the same in five words: "The superior man is modest in his speech, but exceeds in his actions." ^[37]

What changes, after an act of courage? Sometimes very little visible. The room is the same. The people are mostly the same. But something in the geometry of the self has shifted: you now know, in a way you did not know before, that you are the kind of person who could do that. The doorway has been walked through. It will be easier, and also harder, next time.

Questions for the reader

• What is the thing you have already half-decided you will do, when the moment comes — and what would it cost you if the moment came tomorrow?
• When you imagine yourself acting bravely, do you imagine the rock or the water? Which one does your actual life ask of you more often?
• Is there a place in your life right now where silence would be easier, and where silence would also be a kind of harm?