Love without courage is a greeting card; courage without love is just recklessness; together they are the whole engine
Roosevelt said it in 1933, standing at the edge of the worst economic collapse in American history, talking to a country that had stopped believing anything was going to be okay: "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself — nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance"
He was right about the fear; but he left something out; fear does not paralyze you by itself; it paralyzes you when you have nothing strong enough to move toward; the people who kept moving in 1933 were not the fearless ones — they were the ones who had something they loved enough to be afraid for
We have been defining both words wrong for a long time; courage gets defined as the absence of fear, which makes it a personality trait you either have or don't; love gets defined as a feeling, which makes it something that happens to you rather than something you do
Both definitions are wrong in the same direction — they make the thing passive; they make it something you wait for rather than something you choose
Here is the T125 definition: courage is advancing in the face of fear for a cause you care that much about; love is a verb, not a feeling — it is the action of treating something or someone as worth protecting, worth building, worth getting out of bed for when you don't feel like it
Under these definitions, neither one makes sense without the other
"Love without courage is a greeting card; courage without love is just recklessness; together they are the whole engine"
— Stan GassLove without courage is warm & inert; it knows what it cares about & stays home; it sends the card; it means well; it produces nothing that requires risk because risk requires courage & courage is the one thing missing; it is not malicious — it is just incomplete; a fire with no oxygen
Courage without love is energy without direction; it advances without knowing why; it is brave in the service of nothing in particular, which means it is available to serve anything — including things that should not be served; history is full of courageous people who aimed at the wrong thing; the aim requires love; the movement requires courage
Together they are the whole engine; you know what you are moving toward because you love it; you move toward it even when it is hard because you have the courage to; the two words are not companions — they are the same move, described from two different angles
Living to 125 in full possession of yourself is an act of love & an act of courage simultaneously; it is love because you have decided your life is worth the care it takes; it is courage because taking that care requires showing up every day for something the world does not always agree is worth showing up for
The couch is fear; the workout is courage; the reason you get off the couch is love; you cannot get the workout without both; that is the whole system in three sentences
Feed them both; starve the fear; convert retreat into advance; every morning; every day; until they have to drag you off the ski slope