To Muster up Your Courage
Today I finished reading an interview taken by RD(Reader’s Digest) with Rudy Giuliani, the mayor of New York. This interview mainly focuses on how he went through the horrific September 11 tragedy as the mayor of the city. The mayor tells how he learned to fight for what he believes in and how he overcame his worst fear. And that deeply impressed me and the word “COURAGE” seems more meaningful to me. Life is not always so peaceful. Giuliani’s father began to teach him how to stand up for what he believes in when he was a small boy. And that helped much to shape his character. He became a man who tends to take the challenge of life. But on Sep. 11 when he saw a man jump from the World Trade Center, he felt it’s too overwhelming to deal with it. And he’s reluctant to believe what he had seen. Then he thought of Winston Churchill. The idea that if the British people could get through months of bombing during World War II, then American people can also do that comforted him. And that gave him confidence to hold on. During the long period of human history, there have been numerous terrible disasters, in which hundreds of millions of people suffered a great deal. But the individual’s suffering behind these events always get neglected when one looks back in history. Different men have different attitude when they face the same difficulty. When I get into trouble, I often become nonplused and easily disheartened. I feel I’m so small in this big, uncontrollable world. And I sometimes even lost the will to control myself…I was afraid of all the unpredicted misfortunes and even a mere trifle trouble would make me too confused to continue anything normal. I knew I wasn’t able to beat it and I was broken. While dying of cancer, Giuliani’s father said to him: “I was always afraid.” “Courage is doing what you have to do even though you are afraid.” Giuliani then learned that courage is about the management of fear, not the absence of fear. Those words touched me greatly. Acting bravely when you are afraid is not easy at all. But the result will be this: you’ll get elevated in your spirit while being a defeated coward is only half-alive after being struck by an accident.
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轻松英语 