Courage and Crisis

Poet and Philosopher David Whyte on the Measure of Courage and Crisis as a Clarifying Force of Self-Expansion

“Courage is what love looks like when tested by the simple everyday necessities of being alive.”

BY MARIA POPOVA

“Courage,” Susan Sontag wrote in her timeless and increasingly timely meditation on the power of principled resistance to injustice, “inspires communities: the courage of an example — for courage is as contagious as fear.” Courage comes in many guises — the courage to despair, necessary for being an artist; the courage to be vulnerable, that surest yet most difficult path to self-transcendence; courage at knifepoint, where our humanity is revealed; the courage to resist cynicism./.../