Chances are, you’ve been a coward at least once in your life. To be honest, you’ve probably been a coward most of your life. If you don’t believe me, read on.
To tell the truth, the main definition of cowardness is “being on the fence”. This is different from ‘not taking a side’, and rather is more about not taking a side consciously or otherwise not knowing what to do.
This is best described with a morbid example: let’s say a child is drowning at a pool. To save the child is to be a hero, and therefore not a coward. To actively not help the child — to sit back and let someone else do the work — is not cowardice either. Evil? Perhaps. But since you made a conscious decision not to help the child, and committed to that decision, it wouldn’t be cowardly.
Cowardice instead would be waiting too long, seeing for other people’s reactions, getting stuck in your head with ‘well maybe the child’s not really drowning, he’s just pretending, and if I do in there to help him now I’m gonna look like a big idiot’. In the time it took for you to pick a side, the child may end up dead — what if, in retrospect, you wish you saved them? What happens to you then?
While you might not have experienced a situation so drastic, lord knows you’ve felt the feeling of “being on the fence” before. Being unsure of whether to raise your hand in class and give a right answer, of telling your crush you like them, of applying to a job opportunity you think would be cool. This indecision, in every case, is cowardice.
Cowardice is something that always leaves a bad taste in your mouth, even in the most minor of circumstances. But here’s the interesting thing: committing, even if it ends up being a bad decision, almost never does. A lot of that bad taste comes not from making a bad decision, but rather not making one at all. That’s because you can’t learn from indecisiveness, but you can learn from a bad decision.
So just remember: You have been a coward, you are a coward, and you will continue to be a coward. But you can always get better.
