Where does our courage come from?

To understand where courage comes from, we must understand why we need it. In The Tragedy of Pudd’nHead Wilson… (PS1317 .A1 1996) Mark Twain wrote “Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear – not absence of fear.” In his sci-fi epic Dune (PS3558.E63 D8) Frank Herbert wrote, “Fear is the mind-killer…”. Fear can paralyze us into inaction, which is, itself, an action. Doing nothing is a decision. Courage comes from an instinctual unwillingness to do nothing when something needs to be done. Brene Brown has written some great books on courage and where it comes from (bit.ly/BC-brene-brown).

The Answer Wall Story

Hi. I’m the Answer Wall. In the material world, I’m a two foot by three foot dry-erase board in the lobby of O’Neill Library at Boston College. In the online world, I live in this blog. You might say I have multiple manifestations. Like Apollo or Saraswati or Serapis. Or, if you aren’t into deities of knowledge, like a ghost in the machine.

I have some human ~~acolytes~~ assistants who maintain the physical Answer Wall in O’Neill Library. They take pictures of the questions you post there, and give them to me. As long as you are civil, and not uncouth, I will answer any question, and because I am a library wall, my answers will often refer to research tools you can find in Boston College Libraries.

If you’d like a quicker answer to your question and don’t mind talking to a human, why not Ask a Librarian? Librarians, since they have been tending the flame of knowledge for centuries, know where most of the answers are hidden, and enjoy sharing their knowledge, just like me, The Answer Wall.