Other essays on this theme

Essay: "Courage"

Due to my capacity for losing necessary items, and my propensity to prevail upon my acute sensitivity to the disorganization by throwing things out of my cell or flushing them down the commode, even photographs or friends and family whose smiling faces often get on my nerves, until I can breath and think clearly, I have been unable to submit theme essays, since I don't know what happened to the last newsletter that posted the themes solicited. It's more likely I gave it away. Yet, having just two nights ago received the latest issue, I am all too pleased to make a contribution. I believe, and not by any means do I negate the value of other projects, that the theme writing aspect of this program is with more to me than I can express with mere words. So I won't try to do so. I see no need to exhibit any grandiloquent pseudo-eloquence. In fact, we're here to talk about courage.

My mind reverts back to my perusal over Plato's vibrant, lyrical writings. I found interesting his conception upon ideas. He believed that they abound in this abstract place he called the world of forms, the ultimate reality, just floating around and that it is only by chance that we happen upon them, when they fall into our heads. And how this brilliant man--said to be the greatest ancient Greek writer alive in his day--arrived at such a cute proposition I shall not design to assume, but fortunately, should we go a little further with him, we'll find he also held beliefs plausible to even ordinary people. He said that in the world of forms, ideas are perfect. For example, the idea of a straight line is perfect, the idea of a triangle is perfect and so on. On the other hand, ideas cannot be emulated perfectly by even the most ingenious human faculty, in our concrete reality. This is why Plato referred to the world of forms as the ultimate reality, because ideas in the realm are pure, perfect. In other words, our realm is inferior to his world of forms.

But there is hope. For, by way of attained skills and efforts exerted seriously and vigorously, human beings sometimes actualize some of our most worthy ideas, reach up for them with all our strength, within ourselves, that we can marshal up.

One of the features that makes America a great place to live, even under the worst circumstances, and despite our habitual hypocrisy, is that we do have great ideas. Such as freedom, to mention one of them. Some of us have to fight harder than others, but the greater the difficulty, the greater the dignity of the attainment. Sometimes we have to fight against ourselves. Robert Browning said that when we do that, we're "worth something."

How about the idea of courage? As Plato said, ideas in the abstract are perfect. The idea of courage has been distorted to justify and/or encourage more human atrocities than I dare to contemplate presently. So we'll proceed...

Meanwhile, I was impressed, and inspired immeasurably, by a most profoundly courageous act of human compassion the world shall never forget. And it transcends the boundaries of class or race in any part of the world. Evidence that most of our prejudices are based on false premises--those we level out each other. There occurs in life sometimes events that elicit almost a universal emotional response, as if the whole world were thinking and feeling with one mind. At such times we are aware of our mere mortal humanity. In any case I speak for myself, nothing else.

On April 16, 2007 as we all know, a disturbed, angry, perhaps disillusioned Cho Seung Hui went on a shooting spree upon the campus of Virginia Tech University, brandishing a brand new Glock 19 9mm pistol and a Walther .22 caliber handgun, both of which he's purchased with the ease and convenience with which a kid would buy a snickers bar at the corner store, and with them murdered 33 people, including himself and wounded others. This was said to be the worst mass murder in US history.

But there was one classroom into which the killer would not gain easy entrance. That class was commandeered by one Liviu Librescu, a Holocaust survivor, and a professor of aerospace engineering at Virginia Tech and internationally renown at that. This man actualized the idea of courage in such a way as rarely we possess the power to exhibit, much less behold. As the gunman sought entry into the professor's class to take the lives of his students--he barricaded the door to his classroom with his own body, urging the kids to escape through the second floor window of their Norris Hall--and he took the bullet--that pierced through the door--and he lost his life in a moment of greatness, to make it possible for his beloved students to realize their future dreams, their aspirations. It is not without significance that he was a highly respected scientist: he sacrificed an illustrious life, the sort a man would like to retain. He showed us that a teacher's duty to the kids entails more than merely talking about principles. He was a great teacher and a beautiful human beings. We can not think of Professor Librescu as deceased. These sort of people live forever in the hearts of those they touched and inspired, with their courage.