Reflective Essay Example about Courage

Nelson Mandela once said,” I learned that courage was not the fear, but the triumph over it. The brave man is not who does not feal afraid, but who conquers that fear.” This essentially means that being foolish isn’t courage, but courage is controlling your fear and overcoming it. Articles such as “The Terror” and “Transcript of Joseph McNeil’s Interview” explains the core meaning of this quote superbly. 

In “The Terror” the main character get’s jumped and during most of the story he tried to stand up to his assailants, but fear had a tight grasp on him. He said that after encountering his assailants,”I would be a mess for days: depressed, irritable, hypervigilant, ashamed.” Standing up to these emotions, and facing his attackers is what made him courageous. He stood up to them as stated in the passage,”I forced myself to stop. I forced myself to turn toward them, and it felt as if the whole world was turning with me.” The figurative language showed that he was still scared of the assailants, but he still stood up to them showing that he was courageous. 

The passage “Transcript of Joseph McNeil’s Interview” is an interview with a man who was a prominent figure in the civil rights movement. Joseph answered a question from the reporter saying,”It was uncertain that we weren’t going to be attacked.” During the sit-in they were constantly met with the reality that their lives could be in danger, and they were fearful of that. Even with that fear in the back of their minds, those men still continued to do sit-ins overcoming the fear. Joseph was asked “how did he cope with the fear,” and he said,” To a large degree we handled it so well because of something intangible called faith. Faith in doing something we knew was right and standing up for it.” Essentially, The reason they controlled their fear was due to the fact that they had faith.

These articles cover such different topics, but they still relate to Nelson Mandela’s quote so well. In these articles, their fear never magically went away. They handled it in very different ways, but they’re still considered to be brave because they didn’t let fear take full control and they still stood up. Anybody can be brave, courageous, or strong, they just have to control and conquer their fear.