The Paradox of Courage
Battle Abby. The true battle is within ourselves.
A Message to Guides, Clients, and the General Public
I write this not for the benefit of those who have lived through an avalanche this season but for those who may still die or lead others to that outcome.
It has been a long journey for me to understand courage. I used to think courage was about sticking my neck out physically, with a corresponding irreverent lack of fear. But that kind of courage killed people, which was the end of my naivety. Truly living takes courage. Living to face the crowd with our intelligent but unpopular ideas, regardless of the social, political or financial cost, is courage. It is time we (the mountain community) start taking courageous action with respect to this winter’s snowpack.
The human relationship with courage is shockingly limited in effective practice. Our coping mechanisms for remaining a member of the tribe are running the show, which is not a recipe for effective action. This is to say that membership in the tribe often means that we do the thing that our ego, boss or colleagues want, or what our friends or clients desire which is rarely in alignment with the laws of nature. Desire produces an ever “tweaked” set of values that have zero shelf life and can lead to tragedy. Little if any of this behaviour is conscious, but it is our work as adventures to become cognizant. Cognizant of weather or not we are practicing courage. Why is this important? Because through the practice of courage we manage risk. What kinds of courage are important for managing risk you ask?
Moral Courage
True adventurers do not do what they are told, they do what is right. What is right will be in alignment with nature and will generally demand a courageous response from us. Learning to move through being afraid of how something looks to others so we can take the right action, is moral courage. The morally courageous thing to do this winter, regardless of who you are or how many hours or badges you have is to back off steeper terrain this season. Backing off is morally courageous because human desires are rarely align with the right thing to do.
Emotional Courage
One of the greatest tools I have ever learned for managing hazards is to say when something scares me. By saying it, I am being courageous. Airing our fear helps us manage situations more effectively because it opens the door to dialogue and through that excange we can better manage situations. Emotional courage is most effective when the person with the most social decorations, tells us that they are scared.
Intellectual Courage
A recent student pointed out to me that intellectual courage is being able to say when we do not know something. Addressing our knowledge gaps, especially when we have decades of experience takes courage, and this years snowpack is obviously outside our our ability to outsmart, as snow often is. Intellectual courage is also speaking to what we do know. This amplifies the facts, which are unpopular this season.
Social Courage
It has become fashionable to focus on speaking up. But it is more important to understand why we fail to speak up when a situation is headed in a direction we don’t think is healthy. We fail to voice what needs to be said because we fear being shunned by the tribe. The asch experiment shows that we have a long history of abandoning reality in order to fit in. The reality of this year’s snowpack is that we have to have the courage to ski conservatively and celebrate that as a success. This year’s snowpack is not hard, but the courage to do the right thing in response the conditions is, clearly, challenging us. The snow is not the problem, our response to it is.
As a society, we still see taking moral, emotional or social actions as weak, and speaking (or writing) about them as a problem because it might hurt someone’s feelings. This is the paradox of courage. Real courage expresses the moral, emotional, social and intellectual issues we are facing . Use these tools to guide your decisions through March as things heat up.