Courage Between the Unknown and the Irreversible

Courage Is the Strength to Make a Move Between the Unknown and the Irreversible

Lately, I’ve been thinking about one question:

What is courage?

Is it being unafraid?

Is it being confident?

Is it simply throwing yourself into something without hesitation?

I don’t think it is any of those things exactly.

The more I think about it, the stranger courage seems.

Right now, this is how I see it:

Courage is the strength to make a move
between what we cannot know
and what we cannot undo.

Children are surprisingly invincible

When we are young, we tend to believe much more strongly that we can do things.

We can jump from somewhere high.

We can become professional athletes.

We can become the best in the world.

Anything feels possible.

Of course, psychology cannot simply claim that young children literally believe they are omnipotent.

But children do tend to show stronger optimism than adults.

Somewhere inside them is a feeling like:

“I’ll probably be fine.”

“I can do it.”

And then, as we grow older, we gradually learn reality.

The world does not obey us as much as we hoped

Sometimes we work hard and still lose.

Sometimes we love someone and get rejected.

Sometimes we do our best and still go unnoticed.

Sometimes doing the right thing brings no reward.

Other people do not behave the way we want them to.

Chance exists.

Luck exists.

Time does not go backward.

And in life, some choices cannot be completely undone.

Growing up may partly mean learning this:

The world will not always go the way I want.

Then people seem to split in two directions

One person keeps thinking:

“I’ll definitely be fine.”

They ignore danger.

They underestimate failure.

They say, “It’ll work out somehow,” and charge ahead.

That is not really courage.

It is closer to recklessness.

Another person learns reality too well.

“Why bother? It probably won’t work.”

“What if I fail?”

“What if I can never go back?”

So they stop choosing.

They stop moving.

That is closer to withdrawal.

Then where does courage exist?

Probably somewhere in between.

Courage is not complete confidence

Mature courage may look more like this:

“I might fail.”

You know that.

“I cannot control everything.”

You know that too.

“If I choose this, there may be things I can never undo.”

You understand that.

And still, somewhere inside you remains this thought:

“There is still something I can do.”

Maybe that is courage.

From “I can” to “Maybe I can’t”

I sometimes think the development of courage looks like this.

As a child:

“I can.”

A little later:

“Maybe I can’t.”

And with maturity:

“Maybe I can’t. But I can still try.”

That final stage may be courage.

Not:

“I will definitely succeed.”

And not:

“There is no point.”

But:

“I don’t know if I can do it. I’ll do it anyway.”

Maybe that is adult courage.

The future is uncertain

This brings us to uncertainty.

We never know the future completely.

We do not know what will happen tomorrow.

We do not know how another person will respond.

We do not know whether a challenge will succeed.

We do not know whether our choice will turn out to be right.

We cannot wait until we know everything before choosing our lives.

So human beings are always making decisions with incomplete information.

And once we choose, we cannot always go back

Then comes another problem:

irreversibility.

Some choices cannot be completely undone.

Words we have already spoken.

A breakup.

Changing jobs.

Publishing something.

Confessing love.

Lost time.

Becoming a parent.

Death.

Some things can be repaired.

Some things can be done again.

But we cannot return to:

“the life in which I never made that choice.”

So human beings are doing something almost absurd every day:

We make irreversible choices about futures we cannot fully know.

That is why courage exists

If the future were completely known,

if success were guaranteed,

if every failure could be perfectly undone,

we would not need much courage.

Courage becomes necessary because we do not know.

Because we may lose something.

Because we may not be able to return.

And yet,

something may still be worth doing.

Courage does not erase fear.

It is:

the ability to make a move while fear is still there.

A phrase associated with Yoshiharu Habu

There is a phrase that Japanese shogi legend Yoshiharu Habu has used as a personal motto:

“Fortune smiles upon the brave.”

I like that phrase very much.

But I do not interpret it as:

“If you are courageous, you will always succeed.”

Life is not that easy.

You can act courageously and still lose.

You can fail.

You can be rejected.

You can be wrong.

And yet there are places you can never reach without courage.

If you never submit your work,

you will never be rejected.

But you will never win either.

If you never confess your feelings,

you will never be turned down.

But you will never reach the future in which the other person says yes.

If you never take a risk,

you may avoid a great failure.

But you also eliminate the future in which something extraordinary succeeds.

So I want to interpret

“Fortune smiles upon the brave”

like this:

Fortune does not favor the brave because they are special.

The brave are simply the ones who walk far enough to reach the places where fortune might smile.

Courage does not simply create more futures

There is another important point.

Choosing courageously does not only open possibilities.

To choose one thing is also to give up another.

If I go right,

the version of me who went left becomes a “what if.”

So courage is not simply a force that increases possibilities.

It is a force that

turns a possibility into reality.

And once reality happens,

it becomes the past.

It cannot be undone.

Courage is also needed after the choice

Is courage only necessary when we first take the leap?

Probably not.

Courage is also needed afterward.

Later, we may learn the truth.

“That decision was wrong.”

“That person did not mean what I thought they meant.”

“I didn’t know enough back then.”

“There is no way to go back.”

We sometimes have to accept truths like these.

That also requires courage.

Not the courage to erase the past.

The courage to look at the past again.

The courage to rewrite the story we have been telling ourselves.

And then,

the courage to choose the future again.

Truth illuminates the past

I once wrote:

Truth illuminates the past.
Courage creates the future.

Now I think it may be slightly more complicated.

We discover the truth.

The meaning of the past changes.

We accept that change.

Then we choose the future again.

So courage does not happen once.

We need it over and over again throughout life.

Does DNA determine courage?

Of course, people are born different.

Some are naturally more fearful.

Some are bolder.

Some tolerate risk more easily.

Some are cautious.

Genetics appears to influence parts of temperament and risk preference.

But there is no single “courage gene.”

Courage is much more complicated than that.

It develops through a mixture of:

temperament,

environment,

success,

failure,

support from other people,

self-understanding,

and our sense of how much influence we actually have over the world.

And that sense keeps being updated.

Courage is not omnipotence

So courage is not:

“I can do anything.”

That is closer to omnipotence.

Real courage may actually begin with understanding our limits.

Knowing what we cannot do.

Knowing that the world does not bend completely to our will.

And still finding:

“This part is mine to act on.”

Then making a move there.

I think of this as:

calibrated agency.

Not overestimating yourself.

Not underestimating yourself either.

Not believing that you control the whole world.

But also not believing that you are powerless.

Maybe courage is the hope that survives reality

As children,

we do not yet understand the world.

So we can think:

“I can do anything.”

As adults,

we learn more about reality.

So we understand:

“I cannot do everything.”

But perhaps maturity does not end there.

I cannot do everything.
But I can still do something.

Then we choose that something.

Maybe that is courage.

In the end

The future is unknown.

The past cannot be undone.

Human beings live between those two things.

If we wait until everything is certain,

life will end before we move.

So at some point,

we have to make a move.

We may succeed.

We may fail.

Fortune may smile.

It may not.

But if we never move,

the board never changes.

So this is how I currently understand courage:

Courage is the strength to understand that the future is uncertain,
to understand that the past cannot be undone,
and still choose the move that is ours to make.

A child’s:

“I can do it.”

is tested by reality,

broken,

and eventually becomes:

“I don’t know if I can.
But I can still try.”

Maybe that is what courage really is.