Courage

I am inspired by courage, by people who quietly go about their day to day lives in a straightforward and dignified manner, or do some brave thing and then wish only for life to return to normal. A good example would be the guys who helped out during the Glasgow airport attack. They themselves did not seek to make anything of their actions nor did they look for any kind of reward or benefit from doing what they did. It was the media who once having identified them, pushed the guys further and further in to the limelight, it seems that our media need not just a bad guy to demonise but also a good guy, preferably two or more to turn in to heroes and examples of what us Brits are supposed to do in the face of attack by Johnny foreigner. Even though the same media tell us time and again how "scared" people are of going out at night, and talking to strangers lest we be attacked and robbed or worse.

Courage also seems to be something that you can loose or have withdrawn from you by a process of trial by media. The McCann family live in a perpetual state of either being the most courageous and dedicated of parents, to being thought of as those responsible directly or indirectly for Maddies loss. For the McCanns this constant judging by others must be as big a strain as trying to find their daughter. Never knowing if people are looking at you with respect, pity, scorn, or worse of all hatred. I cannot help but notice the similar attitude that the media and society generally have to any person who is seen as different. Race, sexuality, disability, gender, perhaps most pointedly those with mental health issues find themselves judged either to be a courageous person fighting against impossible odds, or damned as the impossible odds won.
Or the notion that people like the disabled have to be grateful for charity and must be seen as courageous because they "overcome" or look cute on sticks. However when the truth is put forward by disabled people, that it is the lack of willingness of society in general to see and acknowledge it's complicity in creating of disabled people, that's when attitudes seem to change. The cute 9 year old girl in pigtails and leg braces, who is a "child of courage" because she has found that moaning about her pain does not help her, will just as swiftly be tomorrows benefit scrounging, workshy, single mother in a council house, tabloid headline believed by enough of the rest of society to make it the truth.

I suffer from anxiety, I sometimes have panic attacks during which I try sometimes successfully to control my anxiety in order to finish what I am doing. One technique I have developed is to ask myself what I would feel like if I was in a truly scary place, instead of in a meeting, or talking to someone in a coffee shop. The scene that I place myself in most often, is in a trench in France on the morning of the first of June 1916, somewhere near the Somme river about 9.30 in the morning.
Since 7.30 wave after wave of men have gone over the top and been mown down. Thousands lie dead and dying only yards in front of the trench. All around me men are gathering for their turn to go over the top, hardly any one thinks twice about what they are about to do. They know that escaping with a "blighty" wound will be the best that they can hope for, and yet they line up, smile, tell ghoulish jokes, and promise to see their mates on the other side. If I were there would I be so calm? In this way I calm myself with shame I have to acknowledge that those men had the right to be scared, probably were but did what they had to do any way. Me all I have to worry about is some newspaper editor deciding if I deserve to be a hero or a villain, I know if I was ever subject to that changeable wind of fortune that I would still regard the trench option as being much more scary.