Courage Essay

Courage When people hear the word courage, most think of soldiers in World War II, firefighters who risked their lives during 911 or even police officers who go to work every day, not knowing if they are going to see their families again. This fact astonished me because so many things in our world today require courage. “What is the definition of courage,” some people may ask. Well, in my overall search for the meaning, I came across probably fifty to a hundred different definitions. One person explained how it took their baby a lot of courage to take its first step, and another saying how he took the training wheels off of his child’s bicycle, hoping his child had enough “courage” to get on that bicycle and ride it. Most of my research done on Google was very hard to find, meaning I had to refine “definition of courage” significantly. A lot of pages also came up that had nothing to do with the word courage whatsoever. My first source, Dictionary.com, had many different definitions. The one I found to be the most accurate for being a dictionary definition was, “Courage; the quality of mind or spirit that enables a person to face difficulty, danger, pain, etc.; without fear; bravery.” To me, this definition is pretty spot-on, but it also lacks the emotion and deepness others see in the definition of courage.
Thesaurus.com being my second source, gave me, “Boldness, braveness,” as a definition. This definition is also, in my opinion, very vague and doesn’t explain courage in great detail. The words boldness and braveness only make up a minute fraction of what courage means to me.
After looking at famous quotes online from the Holy Bible about courage, I found one that caught my attention. It reads, “David also said to Solomon his son, ‘Be strong and courageous, and do the work. Do not be afraid or discouraged, for the LORD God, my God is with you. He will not fail you or forsake you until all the work for the service of the temple of the LORD is finished.”-1