This is the face of courage. Dr. Barry Marshall, a physician from Australia, discovered that ulcers were not caused by stress, spicy food and acid. Rather, he maintained, they were caused by the h.pylori bacteria. This contradicted established theories, and almost no one believed him. In fact, he and his partner, Dr. Robin Warren, were widely ridiculed.

After numerous difficulties, and because running a human test of his theory was illegal, he simply drank some h.pylori himself. He promptly developed ulcers. He suffered with them long enough to be properly tested, then took some antibiotics and just as promptly recovered. In the end, he and Dr. Warren received the Nobel Prize in Medicine.

Courage is not the domain of the movie hero; it’s the domain of the woman or man who can stand on their own, and against the world if necessary.

* * * * *

Now, before you go back to the mundane, please consider the situations where you stood against the crowd, or where you might in the future. These are the stories we need to run through our minds, and then to run through our lives. And again, large or small does not matter. In fact, starting small is better than trying to make a huge stand. Courage, like a muscle, needs to be built through consistent exertions, starting with the small and working up to the large.