Tuesday, July 24, 2012

Finding Your Inner Gryffindor, part 2


Pottermore + a discussion at work led me to the sequel for this post. I talked about getting sorted into Gryffindor, and how it forced me to learn things about myself that I didn't know. (Well, yeah, it does sound cheesy when you say it that way, but read the first post. It'll make more sense.)

Anyway, I got to thinking about why it is that courage is more important to me than so many other things (including the other house traits). A debate at work kind of put things in place for me. At least with one of the reasons. 
Intelligence: Of course I value it this. (I planned to be in Ravenclaw, didn't I?) I don't tolerate stupidity well. But acting stupid is quite different from being stupid. It's the acting stupid I hate. Anyway, there's a limit to intelligence. Only a small percentage of your intelligence potential is even up to you. The rest is in-born, and a result of how you were raised. 

Cleverness: I'd love to be clever. I greatly appreciate cleverness. But when it comes to something you can learn, cleverness also has it's limits.

Physical strength: Again, useful and admirable, but no matter how much you exercise, there will still be big people and little people. 

Getting the idea?

There's a long list of qualities that are great and important. It's harder to admire people who don't have them. But courage is different than the others in one very important way: It's 100%, absolutely, completely your own choice. 

At least half the people reading this won't believe me. 

There's a very good reason for that. It's almost the mantra of our generation. "That's just the way I am". "Love me for who I am". "I shouldn't have to change for anyone." 

Bleh-de-blah-de-blah. 

Don't think for a moment that I'm condoning cruelty, biases, or prejudice. Quite the opposite. But people aren't using these phrases for love. They're using them as excuses. Reasons to be lazy. No matter how loving and accepting we are, we still have a responsibility to try to become our best selves. To learn and grow and improve. 

Because of that, we've come to believe that being brave or strong is something that we're born with. "I just have no will power." "I'm just not very strong." As if it's a disease that we can catch, or a congenital chromosome disorder. 

It isn't. 

I mean, you all KNOW the cliche. Being brave isn't not being afraid. It's being scared to death and marching on anyway. 

No matter who you are, where you live, what your job is, how many fears you have, or how dire your circumstances, you always have your ability to make choices. And being courageous through it all is a choice. 100% something that you decide to do. 

Or, as Sirius tells Harry (at least in the movie version) "the world isn't split into good people and deatheaters. We've all got both light and dark inside of us. What matters is the part we choose to act on. That's who we really are."
Weak people aren't weak because they were born that way, or were raised in a bad situation, or caught a disease of some sort. Weak people are weak because that's the part of themselves that they choose to act on. 


I don't have sympathy for slime like wormtail because his betrayal was a decision.


He was sorted into Gryffindor. He was like Neville: awkward and a bit of a misfit, but with the potential to become the bravest of them all. It was there. But he made a choice. He acted on his dark side in order to save his own skin, even though it meant leaving two people to die. Two people who treated him like a good friend, even when no one else would. Two people who trusted him with their lives. Literally. 


Nobody who would sell their friends to the chopping block just because the bad guy was scary ever deserves my sympathy.


Perfect counter-example: George Mcfly. At the beginning of the movie he followed the wussy path. "I'm afraid that I'm just no good at confrontations." 







But one confrontation







Proved that he wasn't "destined" to be a wussy-pants. He took control.












And changed everything. It was in him all along. But like Sirius said, it's the part we choose to act on that defines who we are.


It's in all of us too. Sometimes life is scary. Everyone has things that they're afraid of. But if we weren't afraid, we wouldn't have to be brave.


Courage isn't a virtue because it saves people from looking a fool, or because it makes some of us into heroes. Courage is a virtue precisely because it's necessary for everyone, it's possible for everyone, and it's hard for EVERYONE.  


That's pretty much it for now. If I discover any other reasons why it's so important to me, I'll write another sequel. 

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