Hi
everyone! I would like to share this quote made by Ernest Hemingway with you: “Courage
is grace under pressure.” I hope you remember it because we were—I mean the
teacher was—talking about that in one of our classes.
First of
all, let’s explain the meaning of the phrase—or at least what I understand from
it. What is courage? What do you think this word means? Well, the Oxford
dictionary says that courage is “the ability to do something dangerous, or to
face pain or opposition, without showing fear.” That is a very good definition—I
think—but we cannot base our lives on a meaning given by a dictionary, it is necessary
to go beyond that and create a good definition founded on our own experience… Possibly
that was what Hemingway did.
Probably,
we may have suffered, cried, had bad moments, or lost a loved person… “Life is
not easy,” right? However, those terrible moments are the ones that help us to
learn how to deal with life and are what we will call “the pressure.”
The idea of
Hemingway is that we, as human beings, can face the bad times and fight against
them, which is hard, I know, but we were made to be happy, and giving up is not
the solution to get happiness. On the other hand, it is TOO easy to give up the
fight and continue being miserable the rest of our lives. The important thing
is not being the winner or the loser of the battle, but the idea is to fight
with honor and demonstrate that we are brave and able to show “grace under
pressure.”
In order to
make it “funnier” I’m sharing this picture that I found, where the little boy instead
of letting the fire burn him, what is he doing? Yes! He is fighting against it :D
. We can see that it is being really difficult for him to extinguish the fire,
but he is trying very hard to do it… I hope you all do the same ;)
Javiera
Francisca Ramírez Cornejo
I enjoyed your post, Javiera! And I totally agree with you.
ResponderBorrarEverybody have gone through a difficult situation or have felt fear of something—at least once in their lives—, so that everybody should have confronted the problem finding courage.
I can tell the story of one of my best friends, who got pregnant when she was 16. She was so scared (and so did I) that negative feelings surrounded her, but she decided to be brave and take the hard way; she found courage. Thanks to that courage she is now full of grace after had being under pressure: she is an excellent dentistry student and a wonderful mom <3
If we choose courage, we will survive to that difficult situation with dignity.
Hi! Thank you for your contribution and your response. It is great to know that many people that have chosen the hard way, have won “the game,” and it is greater to know that people really close to you have done so. Sharing this kind of examples—real ones—helps us to understand that if one person could find the courage under pressure, so can we.
BorrarBest!
I think that taking the easiest way out is just being a coward. If you just go for the easiest things, doing little effort, trying to give not too much but to receive a lot, and not risking things, then you have never known what life is about. Life is about panic, about risks, about danger... that's what brings excitement into the game. As Hemingway states, when you are in a situation of pressure and you show courage, it is a grace. And not too many people dare to live like that. I just believe that it is living under anesthesia, as if you didn't have intense feelings. As Hemingway states, courage is not something easy to show; it is a grace. I'm sure that many of the soldiers who fought the war (an important topic for Hemingway) had to show courage under pressure too. It was their life that was in danger. Life is a battle, just as war is. It is our decision whether to be hidden in order not to be shot, or to be fighting at the front with honor.
ResponderBorrarEste comentario ha sido eliminado por el autor.
ResponderBorrarYour post is very touching Javiera, it is a great reflection of the quote and I think I couln´t have said it better. "There is a remedy for everything except death" so that we need to gather all the resources available to fight against whatever is making our lives struggle. We need to chose the long way to the goal, even if we fall down, we should be able to stand up as many times as it requires, never give up; as the quote claims, finding courage under pressure and that courage is a gift. I know there might be moments in which you feel devastated, but there is always a way to overcome difficulties.
ResponderBorrar