“Courage is found in unlikely places.” ~J. R. R. Tolkien

If you think you lack courage, I ask you to think again.

We hear of courage all the time. Heroic acts, daring achievements, newspaper headlines, viral videos of people risking their lives. The internet is filled with examples. So are books, movies, and just about all media we consume. But what about us? What about the day to day? Can we find courage amidst the humdrum?

The answer is yes. Courage, like beauty, is hidden all around us.

Beauty: The Invisible Embrace, by John O’Donohue (January 1, 1956 — January 4, 2008), is a heartwarming, revelatory ode to beauty and what it means to be human. Interwoven with the unique soul of the Irish, it brought me back to my time spent living in Ireland, a land and people that remains beautiful despite its difficult history. While I was reading, I found a short passage on courage that I wanted to share with you.

“It is courage that restores hope in the heart. In our day to day lives, we often show courage without realizing it. However, it is only when we are afraid that courage becomes a question.”

We are often brave without realizing it, because we’re not always in the grip of some terrible fear. Yes, when you face something despite terror, that is courage, but you show courage in countless other ways. And courage breathes a fullness into life, wherever it is.

“Courage is amazing because it can tap in to the heart of fear, taking that frightened energy and turning it towards initiative, creativity, action and hope. When courage comes alive, imprisoning walls become frontiers of new possibility, difficulty becomes invitation and the heart comes into a new rhythm of trust and sureness. There are secret sources of courage inside every human heart.”

We live with courage every day, but in the absence of mortal fear, we don’t see it. Yet if you were to look at yourself as an outsider, the little braveries would reveal themselves, just as looking at the world around you with a different perspective yields beauties you hadn’t noticed.

Life is bursting with pains and difficulties. Life is tragic for everyone. The Roman philosopher, Lucius Annaeus Seneca, put it well when he said, “Sometimes even to live is an act of courage.” Yes, it takes courage to live your life, even the seemingly mundane, because life is a fog we all must walk forward into, and in that fog waits every ounce of joy and suffering we will ever experience — and eventually, our deaths.

It takes courage to get out of bed on a hard day.

It takes courage to face the problems before you.

It takes courage to love and be loved.

It takes courage to keep trying.

It takes courage to dream.

No doubt you can recall moments of fear. Some where you let fear win, but others where you transmuted fear, turning its walls into steps, its hardship into fuel, and from that effort transcended that little voice in your head that tells you you’re never good enough, not strong enough, that things won’t work out. You overcome yourself every day, because the battle between good and evil, creation and destruction, success and failure, hope and despair, is fought each and every moment for the rest of our lives. It takes courage to live.

Where there is life, there is beauty. Where there is beauty, there can be courage. And you are beautiful, no matter the metric, because in every human heart is a wellspring of light that shines forth —and in the dark times, all the brighter.

Let the courage in your heart surprise you. It is there.