It is possible to overcome cowardice. But only at a certain stage, when her inclinations appeared in a person, and she herself had not yet turned into a quality of personality.
The Young Years by Archibald Joseph Cronin tells of an Irish boy who ends up in an English school. The boy was small, frail, he was bullied by classmates, but he could not answer. He complained all the time to his grandfather, with whom he lived, but he always advised him the same thing: «You must fight, and not just fight, but fight the strongest in the class.» One day the boy agreed, and his grandfather taught him boxing. An additional difficulty was that he felt something like sympathy for the strongest classmate, because he just did not pester him. And yet he publicly challenged him to a fight, he got a good one himself, but since then the attitude towards him in the class has changed, and he generally made friends with the enemy.
- How to stop being afraid of the future?
Several times, while working at school, I gave this book to read to those who, it seemed to me, needed it. I understood that it was necessary to help them cope, this is just an internal state of cowardice, characteristic of very many. The main thing is to help overcome it.
The cowardice of children is often rooted in the anxiety of parents. It develops out of the natural timidity of a weak being. That is why domestic insecurity is so harmful, and even worse is the suppression of personality in elementary school, where the sergeant-major teacher puts everyone in the Procrustean bed of her ignorance, thereby instilling the worst social skill — the ability to keep a low profile and obey.
In addition, timidity or courage are innate qualities. Psychologist Viktor Frankl describes the following episode: “During the First World War, a military doctor, a Jew, was sitting in a trench with his non-Jewish friend, an aristocratic colonel, when heavy shelling began. The Colonel teased his friend, saying: “You are afraid, aren’t you? Another proof of the superiority of the Aryan race over the Semitic.» “Of course I’m afraid,” the doctor replied, “but as far as superiority is concerned, if you, my dear colonel, were afraid as I am, you would have fled a long time ago.” It’s not our fears or our anxiety that matters, but how we deal with them.”1.
It turns out that courage is the energy of overcoming fear, divided by the amount of cowardice. And on the segment of the human path from the inclinations of cowardice that have just appeared to cowardice as a personality trait, of course, a lot can happen. The process is reversible.
In addition to personal circumstances, much depends on the social environment and values accepted in society. When the environment is insecure and values are blurred, even an epidemic of cowardice can occur. In the accelerating unpredictability of the outside world, it is much easier for a child to get cold feet. When his actions are not motivated, that is, not evaluated, he has nothing to cling to: he feels neither support nor condemnation of his actions.
After all, courage is not only the ability to fight, but also the ability not to go with the flow, to uphold one’s principles, not being afraid, in which case, to remain alone or temporarily lose prosperity. And cowardice is an infantile reaction to circumstances, where the most important meaning is to preserve oneself at all costs. Perhaps this is the only reaction to pain, imagination, stress. What society do we live in? Where it is mercenary to remain silent, indifferently abstain, means to be condemned; where not to stand up for a girl or leave a comrade in trouble — unworthy of respect? Or, on the contrary, where career climbing «over the heads» is considered valor, submission to superiors regardless of one’s own opinion (which is usually not) is corporate solidarity, and the ability to make money (no matter how) is the highest quality of the mind? The moral atmosphere in society always contributes to the formation in a person of either social courage or cowardice.
1 V. Frankl «Man in search of meaning» (Progress, 1990).