Too little
Keeping it imaginary
I will show it once nobody could dislike it.
The promised certainty postpones the work indefinitely.
Courage
The dragon is made of paper. The audience feels rather larger.
A willingness to face proportionate risk for a worthy purpose, guided by judgment.
Courage helps a maker bring sincere work into the world while judgment is still uncertain. Sharing gives an imagined scene, a tune or a picture a chance to reach someone. You may care deeply about the response and still decide that the work is worth offering. The worthy purpose is communication, discovery or delight; applause is one possible response, not the permission that makes the attempt legitimate.
Courage gives a work that can finally meet an audience
You have made a short puppet scene for a few friends who want to see it. The paper dragon is scarcely bigger than your hand. Its shadow, however, has theatrical ambitions. You briefly imagine that everyone watching is a real artist and you are about to be found out. Then you begin the scene, give the dragon its ridiculous voice and let the audience encounter the ending. Some lines work better than others. Now there is a performance to learn from, rather than a perfect future performance that nobody has seen.
How Courage is expressed
Physical Courage
Physical Courage faces bodily danger for a worthy end, as when a trained professional protects people during a dangerous event. Artistic spectacle alone does not make a risk worthwhile; these pages assign no hazardous performance.
Moral Courage
Moral Courage faces the costs of a defensible expression: presenting an unfashionable view, acknowledging a collaborator or declining to falsify an account. A quiet first showing can also require courage when the work matters to its maker.
When risks overlap
Artistic speech may affect livelihood, relationships and physical safety. Consider the actual circumstances and who bears the consequences. The aim is meaningful expression with judgment, not maximum exposure.
Finding the balance in Courage
An illustrative everyday situation
Present a handmade puppet scene to a willing audience before knowing whether it will be admired.
A fitting response
A considered showing
This scene is ready for a first audience.
You choose a suitable setting and offer what you have made.
Pursued too far
Exposure as proof
I must show everything to the harshest audience.
The ordeal has displaced the purpose of sharing.
A first showing turns fear into something you can learn alongside.
When the situation changes
You learn that the gathering will be recorded and shared publicly. Decide whether that audience suits the work and everyone involved. Courage may mean asking for a different arrangement before beginning.
What Courage makes possible
A small performance can reveal a pause that matters, a line that lands and a passage that still needs work. Courage lets these discoveries enter the process. It also lets you state a considered artistic choice without disguising it as what everyone else wanted. The feeling of being a fraud need not decide whether you begin. You can acknowledge how much you still have to learn and give this particular attempt your care.
Courage in ordinary life
The blank page
Write a rough opening instead of waiting for a first sentence that proves you belong. Let it be provisional, then find one image or turn worth developing. An imperfect attempt gives your judgment something to work on.
A thoughtful disagreement
Explain why a scene needs an unresolved ending when a friendly workshop favors a quick reconciliation.
Nearby virtues, different work
Sincerity
Sincerity gives the work something honestly meant. Courage faces the fear of offering it.
Diligence
Diligence develops the work through revision. Courage permits a showing before revision can guarantee approval.
Courage and its counterfeits
Counterfeit: The compulsory ordeal
Seeking the cruelest criticism is a counterfeit of Courage. Genuine Courage chooses a worthwhile purpose and a fitting audience.
Counterfeit: The fearless pose
Pretending not to care can resemble Courage. You can care about the work and admit nerves while presenting it clearly.
How to cultivate Courage
Name what sharing this work could make possible.
Choose an audience and stage of completion that suit that purpose.
Make the offer, then distinguish what happened from what you feared would happen.
Try it today
Public expression can carry social, professional or safety costs. This practice does not ask for threatening exposure, a dangerous performance or disclosure of another person’s private story.
Share a suitable piece or completed section with a willing person, saying what kind of response would help. Choose material and circumstances without confidential disclosure or a foreseeable threat; a private showing can be a real beginning.
In a diplomatic conversation
Share sincere work before admiration is assured.
Questions worth returning to
What would be worth communicating even without admiration?
What can an actual first audience teach me?
Keep the practice proportionate
Public expression can carry social, professional or safety costs. This practice does not ask for threatening exposure, a dangerous performance or disclosure of another person’s private story.
About these practices · DisclaimerQuotations and further reading
Seven selections to return to through the week. Follow a source link to read the surrounding passage.
But do not, on the other hand, if you are ready and willing to pay this price, fear that you may be unable to get on for want of special talent.
This excerpt completes Ruskin’s instruction not to fear a lack of special talent. His surrounding argument distinguishes different rates of learning while affirming that ordinary learners can make real progress.
Having well established his judgment, and stored his memory, he may now without fear try the power of his imagination.
Reynolds describes an experienced student moving toward independent work. Preparation can support the step into an outcome that cannot be guaranteed.
The artist must now step down, don his working clothes, and become the artisan.
Stevenson describes the move from an imagined work to its material execution. Making the first actual version exposes an idea to difficulties that imagination alone can avoid.
Having copied her novel for the fourth time, read it to all her confidential friends, and submitted it with fear and trembling to three publishers, she at last disposed of it,
The narrator describes Jo submitting a much-revised novel while still afraid of judgment. Courage is visible in the submission, before the mixed reception that follows.
Genius can only breathe freely in an atmosphere of freedom.
Mill argues that unusual thought and practice need room to develop. In a small creative venture, allowing an unproven idea to be seen helps make that room.
you must remember that hopelessness would have locked my mouth, not opened it.
Morris explains why he speaks publicly about a difficult future for art. A worthwhile hope can move a maker to offer something before its reception is assured.
Patience and prudence must not be lacking to us, but courage still less.
Morris calls for sustained action in support of art. His surrounding rhetoric invokes a biblical fighting band; the applicable point here is that care and patience can accompany a willing first step.
Continue exploring
Take these ideas into everyday life
Read freely, follow the fourteen-virtue program, or adapt this collection in My Virtues. Begin with a piece you want to make.