Human courage

Napoleon Bonaparte said, "Courage isn't having the strength to go on - it is going on when you don't have strength." Let us step back and think about courage. Introspect a little. After losing a loved one, how does one find the strength to wake up the next morning to face the emptiness? When a pet goes missing, how does one find the strength to walk home to home with the tiny hope that someone might have seen your precious pet? Even after there is no strength to get up and go on, how does one still find it in them to get up and move on? Would we call this courage? Is it innate?
The best answer to this question can be illustrated by looking at a spouse who has lost their significant other. After over 50 years of living together, my friend's mother lost her 92 old husband to old age. Needless to say, the entire family was shattered at losing the man who imbibed in them the values that founded their very being. A man known to make women weak in their knees, known to command respect from people of all ages, and most importantly, known to love his family above all else. Through her period of mourning, Mami (as my friend calls her mother) often wondered when her day would come. She could not imagine waking up in her bed every morning knowing that her husband's warm and loving embrace would be missing. But then weeks passed, and months... my friend visited Mami in their hometown over Christmas, nearly six months after her father's demise. A void clearly filled the room, making its way into the tensed laughter of all the family members. Before their arrival to Mami's house, no one felt Mami could handle her first Christmas without her husband. But her smiling, laughing, and tearing up with joy pleasantly surprised every single person in the room, and to see the strength that exuberated from her very core gave them hope. A strong woman, she came to terms with her life and her necessity to go on . I saw photos of Mami and her family from their Christmas that year. She was glowing, happy as ever knowing that her entire family was with her. And although she had lost her husband, she took solace in the love her children and grand children and GREAT grand children showered up on her.
This is human courage. The innate instinct to go on, to find strength where there is no hope, to find courage where this is no strength. I often wonder how I will react if, in 60 years, god forbid, I were to lose my husband. Would I have the courage to go on? I can't say I know, or that I want to find out. But people like Mami are living proof that human courage is a great thing, and the only thing that gives us that strength to keep on truckin'.