Courage
What feelings arise in our hearts and minds when one hears the word courage? Some may feel a sense of admiration, respect, fears or maybe the word does not evoke any emotion. This powerful word has a very long history. The Oxford English Dictionary cites the origin of the word as derived from the Latin word coraticum. The Latin root of the word “cor” means "heart" and later, after the word entered the English language by way of Old French, it was completed with the suffix “–age,” which expresses action or the result of action. Therefore, “courage” literally means an action that comes from a heart, and figuratively can be defined as “that quality of mind which shows itself in facing danger without fear or shrinking” (“courage”, n. Oxford English Dictionary). The definitions of this word are numerous as in the case of most words; they evolve throughout history due to a variety of forces that trigger those semantic changes. Today, we typically associate courage with heroic and brave deeds or actions, but this modern definition often fails to recognize what one might call inner courage. Inner courage is the strength and resolve not only to speak and act honestly and openly about one’s identity or beliefs, but to adopt that courage as a way of life. The poem "Crazy Courage" by Alma Luz Villanueva illustrates this type of inner courage. In the poem, a student named Michael shows up to fiction class dressed “in men's clothes” then later he shows up to poetry class “dressed in women's clothes” (Villanueva). The poem describes Michael's courage to be who he truly was despite the pressures of societal conformity and even those who could not understand what he was doing dressed as a woman, could see his dignity shine through. Villanueva writes:
his perfect dignity, the offering
of his living, red rose to the perceptive,
to the blind, to the amused, to the impressed,
to those who would kill him and
to those...