Courage

Ooooooooooooooooooooohh tough one. It's easier to launch into a diatribe of wht doesn't constitute courage, which I mean may be valid because I can think of plenty of contexts where courage is overused - say newspapers, sports broadcasts and the military.

A lot of currency has probably gone out of this word as hero status is bequethed on people who undertake the normal risks to be expected of their job. Some jobs contain more risks than others to be sure, but that is not really a quality of character that makes somebody attractive so much as a fetish for somebody in uniform.

So it's voluntary courage, a demonstrable ability for somebody to step out of their comfort zone and do something with no particular compulsion to do so.

Our society cannot ask the person on the street to run into a burning building on the chance somebody might be trapped inside, it can put this down as an obligation in a job description and that is a chief distinction between real courage and a tough job. An extreme distinction to be sure.

I am attracted to people who are courageous in their principals, who apologise when they are not obliged to. Who stand up for people that are unpopular to defend, who risk social scorn and embarassment to do what is right.

A simple but effective model of learning is to draw two concentric circles one within the other, the small inner circle is the comfort zone. The larger outer one is not, we learn by occupying the non-comfort zone until it becomes comfortable and then both circles expand.

And similar to kindness, courage makes life easier. I like people who stick up for themselves almost as much as I like people who stick up for others. There's no time I loath myself more than when my moral courage fails, there's no time I love a girl more than when she is telling me what I did wrong.

Just as everyone wants some kind of shelter to sleep in, somebody with courage breeds courage in me. Courageous people are good to have around, to set examples.

Furthermore like the optimist (and all these traits tend to correlate) they make things possible. No two people on earth would ever get together if one didn't have the courage to approach the other. In that way it is one of the most fundamental qualities of attraction.