When in Doubt

Ask yourself, “What is the courageous decision to make?"

Sometimes we are so torn apart by the competing voices in our head. At such instances, a good question to contemplate is “What is the courageous decision to make?¹

In The Screwtape Letters, a book dedicated to his close friend, J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis wrote a masterpiece of satire based on the wise old devil advising his nephew Wormwood on how he should overthrow the world. Screwtape counsels,

To make a deep wound in his charity, you should therefore defeat his courage.

Screwtape elaborates,

Courage is not simply one of the virtues, but the form of every virtue at the testing point…at the point of highest reality.

Intriguingly, Screwtape says to his nephew, “The emotion of fear is, in itself, no sin.” But, he stresses, “the act of cowardice is all that matters.”²

This is not a lecture about angels and demons. From Latin, courage is cor, or “heart.” We need to “take heart.” Because there are so many unknowns when we are making a leap in our lives, courage is a prerequisite.

On this bridge-crossing journey of making life’s transitions, let’s ask ourselves, “What is the courageous decision to make?”

Practise the virtue of virtues: Courage. 

This is a mini-section from the forthcoming book, Crossing Between Worlds.
Stay tuned for more excerpts and counterintuitive ideas from Crossing Between Worlds.

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Daryl Chow Ph.D. is the author of The First Kiss, co-author of Better Results, and The Write to Recovery, Creating Impact, and The Field Guide to Better Results .

If you are a helping professional, you might like my other Substack, Frontiers of Psychotherapist Development (FPD).

1. Adapted from David Whyte’s audiobook What to Remember When Waking.

2. The Screwtape Letters, by C.S. Lewis, p. 161.