239. Finding Courage

When you see an injustice happening, you might not have the courage to speak up. The personal risk of saying something can feel too great and you don’t want to deal with the backlash. In some cases, what you get for bringing attention to an injustice might even be financial ruin or physical violence.

But if someone else speaks up, you might then feel the risk of getting involved has been reduced or at least spread out. It now feels possible for you to add your voice, to courageously join in opposing the injustice. To find your courage, you needed someone to show you that speaking up was possible, which helped you see that your aversion to risk could be overcome.

In a similar way, art can supply us with courage. Art shows us possibilities — ways of being and feeling and living that are different from our own. It shows us through photographs and films, through plays and performances, through songs and poetry. It shows us that it’s possible for us to be and say and do things we did not think achievable. It shows us that our current form of life is not the only one available and that we could live differently.

The artist, by creating the artwork, takes some of the risk for us. The risk is that what they create will not be seen as valuable, that it might even be intensely criticized, sometimes to the point of personal harm. History is littered with examples of artists being persecuted because of what they dared to express.

By blazing new paths, artists grant us an opportunity to see that what we once thought impossible is truly possible, and by seeing this, we enable and expand our own creative capacities. It is by fully applying our own creativity that we begin to take those courageous and compassionate actions that will bring immense joy to ourselves and others.