A Softer Kind of Courage
Lately, I have been keeping myself busy.
I have applications to send, people to reach out to, research to wrap up, articles to write, and civic work that always seems to fit somewhere on my calendar. Some of this is necessary, some of it just helpful. Filling my day gives shape to uncertainty, and there is comfort in reaching evening with evidence that I did something.
But I can tell when my work has a real purpose and when I’m just keeping busy to avoid my worries. I’ve gotten good at filling up my time before anxiety has a chance to settle in. The trouble is, worry doesn’t go away just because my schedule is full. It simply waits.
There are pressures in my life right now that finishing a task won’t fix. Some are about money. Some are emotional. Others are tied to my professional pride and the uneasy sense that all my years of experience should still matter. I keep busy because it feels easier than standing still and facing these truths.
Then I heard an interview with the writer Giulia Enders, who used the human lungs to describe a different kind of strength.
The lungs are soft. They do not drag air into themselves through force of will. Muscles around them create the space, and the lungs receive what enters. They expand. They take in what the body needs, release what it no longer needs, then do it again. Their softness allows them to repeat this work thousands of times each day.
We rarely speak about strength that way. Strength is usually described as pressure, resistance, resolve, or the ability to push harder. We praise the person who keeps going, takes on more, and refuses to slow down. I understand the appeal of that image because I have lived much of my life by it.
But if you hold your body in tension all the time, it eventually gets tired. So does a life. Enders suggested that softness is not a failure of strength. The lungs work because they yield. They make room. Their power lies in their ability to respond to what comes rather than remain fixed against it.
That thought stayed with me because Stoicism is often misunderstood in much the same way. People imagine the Stoic as someone who hardens himself against pain, suppresses emotion, and meets every hardship with a clenched jaw. I once thought that too. It was one reason I kept my distance from Stoicism for so long.
The Stoics asked for something more demanding than hardness. They asked for clarity.
Epictetus began with the recognition that some things are within our control and others are not. Our judgments and actions belong to us. Outcomes, timing, other people, and the turns of fortune do not. The practice begins when we stop trying to force the second group into the first.
That takes effort, but it’s not about pushing against everything in our way. It’s about making the effort to see things clearly.
I know what belongs to me in this season. I can apply for positions that fit my experience. I can reach out to people who may know of opportunities. I can continue to write, teach, consult, and use the abilities I have spent a lifetime building. I can make thoughtful financial choices and speak honestly about what is weighing on me.
What I can’t do is make an employer recognize my value. I can’t force a hiring process to move faster. I can’t command the next chapter to take the shape I would prefer, nor can I work so hard that uncertainty finally gives up and leaves me alone.
There is a temptation to respond to those limits by adding more effort. Send another application. Begin another project. Clean something. Research something. Write something. Keep the hands busy so the mind does not ask what happens if none of it works.
Staying busy has helped me get through difficult seasons. It has also allowed me to avoid parts of them.
I do not think the answer is to stop working. That would turn a useful insight into an excuse. There are things that need to be done, and the Stoics never taught withdrawal from responsibility. Marcus Aurelius governed an empire during war, political unrest, and disease. He did what belonged to him.
But he also reminded himself to return to his own mind when circumstances pulled him away from it. He understood that effort without inner discipline becomes another form of agitation. A person can look productive while being ruled by fear.
I’ve noticed this in myself. Some days, I get a lot done but still don’t feel any calmer. The work was real, but the deeper pressure was still there. I spent the day organizing things around it instead of facing it.
The lungs offer another way. They receive what is present. They do not decide that certain air is beneath them or that another breath should have arrived instead. They take in what comes, use what sustains life, release what cannot remain, then wait for the next breath.
There is something Stoic in that rhythm.
Acceptance is the moment when the mind stops arguing with reality long enough to work within it. I have written before that acceptance is not resignation. I still believe that. It is the clear recognition of where we stand so that our next action comes from truth rather than panic.
This kind of acceptance can seem gentle because it doesn’t show up with force. It eases the urge to control everything. It lets disappointment be there without letting it become defeat. It gives fear a place, but not the whole house.
This may be where courage enters.
Courage is often pictured as the ability to charge forward. Sometimes courage asks us to stay where we are long enough to feel what our busyness has kept at bay. It asks us to admit that we are worried, tired, hurt, or afraid of losing a part of ourselves we’ve worked hard to build.
Professional pride isn’t always about vanity. Work can be where our skills, purpose, and identity come together. When that feels shaky, the loss goes deeper than just money. It brings up questions about our worth and belonging that a résumé can’t really answer.
A softer kind of courage allows those questions to be present. It does not rush to silence them with a slogan. It gives them room to breathe without treating them as verdicts.
Seneca wrote that we suffer more in our imagination than in reality. I have always understood that as a warning against needless worry. I now hear something gentler in it too. The imagination tightens around possibilities and holds them as though they have already happened. The mind starts living in a future that isn’t here yet.
Softness opens that grip. It lets me admit that today’s pressure is real without deciding what it means for my whole future. I can do what I can now and leave tomorrow’s worries for tomorrow. This creates a little space between uncertainty and fear, and maybe that’s enough room for wisdom to show up.
The Stoics saw temperance as one of the four central virtues. We usually think of temperance as restraint around food, drink, anger, or desire. It can also govern effort. There are moments when more force adds nothing and begins taking something away.
Knowing when to stop for the day is a kind of temperance. Sitting quietly after finishing your work can be its own discipline. Letting uncertainty be there, instead of trying to outrun it, might take more self-control than just adding another task.
There is no easy answer hidden in the lungs. Breathing will not resolve financial pressure, secure employment, or quiet every fear. I would distrust any philosophy that promised as much.
The lesson is smaller and more useful. A life cannot remain clenched forever.
We need the ability to act, and we need the ability to receive. We need the strength to move toward what is ours to do, then release the outcome once our part is finished. We need room inside ourselves for disappointment, hope, grief, pride, uncertainty, and the ordinary joy that continues to appear among them.
The lungs know how to do this without ceremony. They fill. They empty. They begin again.
Perhaps that is the form courage needs to take in this season of my life. I will keep applying, writing, reaching out, and showing up where I believe I can be useful. I will also try to notice when activity becomes an attempt to hide from the pressure building underneath it.
And when I notice, I will pause. I’ll let the moment be what it is. I’ll take in what I need and let go of what I can’t carry forever.
Then I will breathe again.
