 Got Courage? Want Perspective?
Courage, a book written by former British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, does a magnificent job of putting our day-to-day fears into perspective. Where do your fears stand in the grand scheme of things? I truly hope that these three incredible stories help you face your fears better and see them in a truer perspective. Raoul Wallenberg.
This Swedish banker had a very comfortable life in a neutral country during World War Two. Even though he wasn’t Jewish himself, he was so outraged by what the Nazis were doing that he chose to go to Hungary, one of the world’s most chaotic and unsafe places in July 1944, to save as many Jews as he could from extermination. His accomplishments are remarkable. Want Courage? When Jews were being rounded up to be taken to the death camps, he would calmly walk up to the SS commander and tell him he had Swedish protection passes and that if any Jews were taken away this commander would be reported and hanged as a war criminal. He saved as many as 25,000 Jews this way even though he forged many of the passes. 25,000! One eyewitness recalled: “He stood out there in the street, probably feeling the loneliest man in the world, trying to pretend that there was something behind him. They could have shot him there and then in the street and nobody would have known about it.” On another occasion, he actually invited Adolf Eichmann, head of operations for Hitler’s Final Solution, over for dinner. Eichmann was obsessed with wiping the Jewish people out of existence. Yet Wallenberg told him that the Nazis were going to lose the war and then he explained why Nazi ideology was so flawed! Eichmann was so enraged by this that he told Wallenberg: “Accidents do happen, even to a neutral diplomat.” Wallenberg disappeared once the Soviets arrived and is believed to have died in one of their Gulag camps, aged 33. Would you have the courage to do this knowing you would likely never see your home country and family again? Martin Luther King, Jr.
Picture this: It’s January 1956. Your newborn is asleep in her cot and your young spouse is fast asleep too. But your house was recently firebombed and you’ve had numerous death threats. It’s after midnight and you’re sitting alone at the kitchen table with a cold cup of coffee. You’ve just received another phone call telling you to get out of town before you or your wife and child will be killed. What would you do? It was at this point that Martin Luther King found his courage had deserted him. He was terrified and had a panicked conversation with God. “I tried to think of a way to move out of the picture without appearing a coward. I got to the point that I couldn’t take it any longer. I was weak.” Was a seat on a city bus worth putting his family at risk for? As he prayed, “the quiet assurance of an inner voice saying, ‘Martin Luther, stand up for righteousness. Stand up for justice. Stand up for truth.’ At that moment I experienced the presence of the Divine as I had never experienced Him before. Almost at once my fears began to go.” King was assassinated twelve years later in 1968 aged 39. I understand that the cause of our livelihood is likely not as jugular as King’s. But if King faced death threats for over a decade, how long do you think it would take for you to get past your current fears if you faced them every day with the same amount of courage? Everyone concurs that our fear diminishes when we confront it over and over. Aung San Suu Kyi
Until recently, she was the world’s most renowned female prisoner of conscience. While living a very comfortable life in England as a wife of an Oxford professor and a mother, she returned to her home country, Burma, in 1988 as prodemocracy movements swept the country. Her father had secured independence for Burma from the British in 1947, but he was assassinated that same year. So she decided to fulfill her duty to a father and country she loved. Despite preaching non-violent protest and despite being democratically elected in 1990 to be prime minister (with 81% of the votes!), she was under house arrest without charge from July 1989 until November 2010 —more than 20 years! Courage? Her arrest came on a day when she and some of her colleagues confronted an army unit who were pointing their guns at her. Rather than surrender, she walked at them alone offering herself as an easy target. Her best-known writings are called Freedom From Fear; can you apply this to your life? “Fearlessness may be a gift, but perhaps more precious is the courage acquired through endeavor; courage that comes from cultivating the habit of refusing to let fear dictate one’s actions, courage that could be described as “grace under pressure”—grace which is renewed repeatedly in the face of harsh, unremitting pressure.”
Aung San Suu Kyi won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991. In May 2008, after Cyclone Nargis hit Burma, Suu Kyi lost her roof and was living in virtual darkness after she lost electricity in her dilapidated lakeside bungalow. She is now 65 years old and has rarely been allowed to see her two children since 1988. She has always had the option to leave Burma and live in comfort, but she has refused since she would never be allowed to return and fight for democracy. Got the courage to sustain your beliefs about what’s right for 20 years despite confined to your decaying house by a paranoid military dictatorship? Courage: Three middle-class professionals who could all have chosen a quiet, comfortable life and never become well known. They all learned how to find more courage. You are not being asked to put your life on the line or your family’s safety at stake. What do you want out of your life? Is it time to hold your chin up higher and say, “I’m not walking into a life-threatening situation. I will show more courage.” As humans we are all made of the same stuff. What are you made of and how much of this is showing? Author: Matt Anderson, The Referral Authority, Author of Fearless Referrals - www.TheReferralAuthority.com - Copyright 2011.
| 
