We need to be conscious and courageous as we navigate life

I say conscious because I don’t think we are always fully conscious as we navigate life, the circumstances we find ourselves in, the decisions we make, the people we surround ourselves with and the influences we submit to. But, most importantly, I am particularly drawn to the point of courage, as I think it is such a defining characteristic that determines our life paths.

I found myself thinking about this as I watched two contrasting but similar interviews recently. The first was Oprah talking to Viola Davis about her book Finding Me and her journey through, among other things, poverty, sexual abuse and colourism to finding love and being one of America’s most celebrated actors.

She talks about her story with the ease of someone who has the courage to learn the lessons that life has thrown at her rather than resisting them.

On the point of courage, Oprah quotes poet and civil rights activist Maya Angelou: “Courage is the most important of the virtues because without courage you can’t practise any other virtue consistently… You can be kind and true and fair and generous and just, and even merciful, occasionally… but to be that thing time after time, you have to really have courage.”

I found this quote so powerful because the virtues that Angelou lists are seemingly simple and inherent, yet are often in short supply in the world we live in.

I then watched an interview with Ta-Nehisi Coates, a writer I find deeply thoughtful and courageous, about his book The Message, which explores his thoughts on politics based on his experiences in South Carolina, Senegal and Jerusalem. Coates says he feels that “the task of young writers is saving the world”. This is because writing is a form of interpreting the world that shapes the way we see things and whose stories are told and whose are not, making them critical at this particular time in a world filled with conflict. “I am most concerned always with those that don’t have a voice.”

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At the heart of his message is the bold assertion that we must have the courage to confront the world as it is and democratise whose lives and experiences are valued, and writers have a pivotal role to play here.

The calling out and standing in the face of injustice and oppression is a position that requires much resistance, unsurprisingly. As a result, it is a test of one’s courage and commitment to be true to one’s character, which Davis and Coates grapple with.

Because at the end of it all, one has to ask: what is it all for? And the courage to articulate that is one of our greatest tests. DM

This story first appeared in our weekly Daily Maverick 168 newspaper, which is available countrywide for R35.