“Everyday courage has few witnesses. But yours is no less noble because no drum beats for you and no crowds shout your name.” - Author Robert Louis Stevenson
The best Aikidoists have everyday courage.
Courage is defined as “the ability to do something that frightens us.” One way to say, “courage” in Japanese is yuuki (勇氣). Yuuki directly translates to mean “courageous energy.” When we think of courage, we often think of heroics or grand gestures. We envision a single warrior standing against many who is yuuki wo dasu (勇氣を出す) or “summoning the courage” to fight. Courage in this sense only seems to come about in those once in a lifetime dare to be great situations. Here, we either have it or we don’t. For most of us, the problem is that our true dare to be great moment never seems to materialize and thus we walk around unsure if we have it or don’t.
Everyday courage is the scaled down version of courage. Everyday courage is the ability to meet life’s small seemingly benign challenges that may not be life threatening but still require inner strength to see them through. Author Robert Louis Stevenson wrote, “Everyday courage has few witnesses. But yours is no less noble because no drum beats for you and no crowds shout your name.” Everyday courage is the dress rehearsal for those dare to be great moments. The idea is that if we can mindfully display courage in the little things that are for the most part banal or uncomfortable, then chances are we should be able to make the jump to big courage when the time comes. banal platitudes
Aikido is the ultimate self-development tool because one of the things it teaches us is everyday courage. Aikido is not something that we master - it is something that we practice. The word practice implies that we get the opportunity to fail, get back up, and try again. To fail and try again requires courage. To do something that we are not good at requires courage. To take in a correction from the teacher requires courage. To be dead tired or not want to go to class and still show up requires courage. Aikido teaches us that with every act of micro courage our macro courage grows and over time as the Japanese proverb states, “even specks of dust if piled up can become mountains” or chiri mo tsumoreba yama to naru (塵も積もれば山となる).
Furuya Sensei once wrote, “One aesthetic of traditional martial arts which is absent in our discussions is that the warrior often must accept their circumstances, however dim, very quietly and with courage - quiet courage.” Understanding this, the main difference between an Aikidoist and a normal person is that Aikido teaches us to mindfully take into account the acts of everyday courage. We realize that with every act of everyday courage, we come closer to knowing who we are and whether or not we will have courage when our dare to be great moment shows up.
In Aikido and in life, we are buffeted by circumstances which are not within our control. Most are not life threatening but are more like an annoying paper cut. But, a paper cut nonetheless still requires a little bit of courage.
Today’s goal: See the victories in everyday courage. Everyday courage brings about everyday victories.
Watch this video and listen to David Foster Wallace's speech to better understand how to look at life and its banal platitudes