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“Life is mostly froth and bubble, Two things stand like stone, Kindness in another’s trouble, Courage in your own.” ~ Adam Lindsay Gordon
If I might be allowed this observation —
It appears there is a missing virtue in the souls of many of our elected leaders, a virtue once prized beyond all others — Courage.
Maybe it’s time to think back to when we first heard the call to courage.
Let me share mine.
When I was in the fourth grade I had a classmate whose mother had been a victim of polio as a child. I remembered how inspirational it was just to watch her struggle to walk with her two canes.
She had an indomitable spirit.
She volunteered for everything, all while raising SEVEN children.
They lived in a small house next door to my favorite park. I often watched them playing outside together, never fighting, always having loads of fun.
I kind of envied them.
They appeared to be the happiest family in the world.
Then something happened I shall never forget.
One of her sons, Joe, came to school one day with his head wrapped in a headband.
We soon learned he was undergoing treatment for head lice.
Some in our class freaked out, treating Joe’s condition as some kind of deadly disease.
Soon fear spread throughout the school.
Joe was unmercifully
- taunted
- harassed
- ridiculed
- isolated
- ostracized
Children can be so very cruel to other children whom they perceive to be different. Joe’s headband marked him as someone to be abandoned.
The scorn heaped upon Joe was something I’d never seen before. The words were personal and so hurtful. As a ten-year-old I learned that just being different was powerful fuel for fear and cruelty.
Clearly, Joe was to be shunned precisely because he was different.
It soon came to pass that Joe’s head lice became an important lesson for me and the fellow members of my Cub Scout Den.
At the weekly Tuesday Den meeting, of which Joe was a member, our Den Mother, who happened to be my mother, asked us if we had anything to report. So we shared with her all that was going on with Joe’s head lice and how badly he was being treated by the kids in school.
Much to our surprise, mother was no stranger to head lice.
As a girl growing up in Yakima she and her sisters had been stricken, repeatedly.
She straightened us all out in a hurry.
- She explained his treatment.
- She shared facts about the condition.
- She removed our fear.
She told us there was no reason to be afraid — he was getting the right treatment and soon the lice would be gone. We needed to stand up for Joe.
The problem, she said, was that someone had let the fear ghost loose upon the school.
People tend to fear what they don’t know, and when fear is left unchallenged it spreads like wildfire.
We must confront the fear head-on.
She said each of us must first face our own fears and then help our other classmates face theirs.
Den 3 needed to demonstrate there was nothing to fear by standing up for Joe.
She suggested a plan.
- We walked as a group to and from class together,
- We ate as a group in the lunch room,
- We played as a group at recess.
We made certain Joe was constantly surrounded by his fellow den members.
We demonstrated by our action that head lice were not to be feared.
Mom’s advice worked perfectly:
- The catcalls ceased.
- The name calling ended.
- The ostracism stopped.
- Class returned to normal.
Mother’s own lesson became a lesson for us all.
The wisdom she passed on was that courage is sometimes best exercised in numbers, when like-minded believers lock arms and stand in solidarity with one another.
We may not know how right now, but the time will likely come for us all to demonstrate a little Cub Scout Courage in the face of the wall of fear which surrounds us.
Just a thought…
Pat
If you have a moment and don’t mind kicking back, listen to Ludwig van Beethoven’s “Symphony No. 5 in C minor — The soundtrack of Courage