Courage & The Possible: A Practical Guide to Possibility

This is a guide to practicing Courage and expanding our capacity for what is Possible. My goal with this guide is to help folks build the courage needed for big and small occasions, from being able to tell a loved one that you need support to being able to participate in actions that allow you to live up to your values.

This guide is mostly informed by the lived experience of a courage acolyte (me), and the lived experiences and wisdom of those around me.

Introduction

On a beautiful sunny day inside of a local bubble tea shop, a friend and I sit down for dinner. My friend, whom I will call Chamomile, is a talented organizer and activist, and there is so much that I admire about them. I order my usual with a watermelon slush, and we catch up. As friends do, we've been meandering since I picked my friend up, talking of many things: driving school, friends and family, gaming etiquette, how much we love that corny sheep detective movie that made us both cry, the frustrations of academia, and inevitably, communes. But then, something unexpected happened. From the inevitable "let's all exit society and live in the woods" banter, we began dreaming of the Possible.

Chamomile and I bounce ideas back and forth, excitement mounting as we dream. In that bubble tea shop, our voices booming, intermingling with the Thai family beside us, we didn't have to cite our sources or worry about performing some impressive form of elocution to be believed, to be excited, to feel possibility. Chamomile illustrates for me the idea of a student-run food truck that provides free food, training, and resourcing. The idea spark something silly: "Remember that restaurant where nonnas run the kitchen?" I ask. Following a tangent about the strange movie made about it, one spark set off another like livewire, and I wonder out loud, "Wouldn't it be cool if we can get elders involved in the food truck?" I've been dreaming up a third space for folks of all ages to connect for a while now, and I'm ecstatic to find how limited my imagination has been.

From there--or perhaps somewhere near there--Chamomile tells me about a farm their friends want to lease together. "I can't commit with them right now, but sometimes you just want to be a fly on a wall"--a witness, an attendee, a small part of something that could potentially be so big and beautiful. Yes, yes! We're both excited. So we should do it too. Buy a farm, start The People's University. Pray one of us will marry an heiress to fund it all. We laugh.

Right. Resources. Funding. "Damn, we'd need a whole grant just for that."

"People should be paid fairly," Chamomile agrees, nodding sagely.

And then: "That doesn't mean we can't start writing the curricula of our dreams right now," I say after a moment to think in the bathroom. I ask Chamomile what they'd like to teach in the People’s University, and they tell me about a course they'd heard about once--a course on courage.

"Oh, shit. You can totally teach a course on that!" I exclaim.

This was the lightbulb moment. The moment I realized that everything I set out to create in this blog--my tools, my thoughts, my future essays--can't be done alone. I have too many brilliant people around me to believe that Possible is made in solitude. We have to do this, I tell my friend. We have to at least start.

So, let's start with courage--the foundation of all things Possible.

Goals & Structure

The purpose of this guide is to help you navigate your own journey to courage. Whether you are noticing it for the first time, or trying to build up to your goals, we encourage approaching this with kindness and self-compassion.

Gentle reminders:

There is no one-size-fits all solution. Depending on practice, it might be easier to be brave for some things and not others. Caretakers may find it particularly easy to fight for others, but not for the self.
Progress is not linear. As a courage acolyte, I find myself leaning into courage on some days and not others.

This guide will be divided into four parts:

Part 1: Understanding your relationship to fear
Part 2: Building a practice of courage
Part 3: Resourcing yourself (and others) for courage
Part 4: Possibility and imagining queer thrutopias

Each part will contain an explanation and a series of exercises, designed with different types of brains in mind. The exercises may tackle different types of interrogations, so pick one or more to complete as you see fit. Feel free to do this alone, with a partner, or with a group.

As with all things related to mental health, big emotions may be expected. Please notice the feelings that come up for you, and be generous with yourself in taking breaks if it feels right.

Part 1: Understanding your relationship to fear

For many, fear can be attached to many things. For me, I trace the line back to what I've observed about my family's relationship to fear despite some very courageous things in my lineage. For others, fear may look a lot like courage. For example, some folks might exhibit thrill-seeking behaviours that mask the fear of being vulnerable in other ways. This part asks you to understand yourself, which may be done with a mental health professional and/or with support from loved ones.

Some questions to consider while you are working through the exercises below:

Who taught you to fear?
What do you fear most? When do you fear the least?
Whose courage do you admire and why?
What does fear/courage look like to you?
Is courage the opposite of fear? When do they coexist?
Did you have permission to fear as a child? What did that look like?
What are your bodily responses to fear? How do you mask/suppress fear?

Part 1 Exercises

Creative: In the spirit of B-horror movies in the most literal definition of fear and courage, capture what fear and courage looks like in a similar format, as seen below in a few classics. If visual art and graphic design isn't your jam, perhaps it's a poem, an ode, a spooky soundtrack, or even a campy Dragula-esque performance.
Structured/Concrete: Identify a recent incident where you felt like you needed to step up with courage, but found yourself unable to overcome whatever was holding you back. Have you responded in a similar way before? What would the ideal outcome have been? What would it take to achieve that ideal outcome? Note down your answers or share them out loud with a friend. Optionally, you may want to revisit the questions above and add additional details.
Detailed-Oriented: Identify two separate events where you felt fear or failed to act with courage when the situation called for it. Draw two parallel lines to create a timeline for both events. The timeline should include details leading up to the event, feelings during the event, behaviours during the event, and feelings/behaviours after the event. Note down similarities and differences for both.
Philosophical: Many Stoics believe that fear is a meaningless form of attachment, and therefore has no purpose in rational thinking. Famously, Seneca says, "we suffer more often in imagination than in reality." Western philosophers, of course, are not the only ones to promote detachment in that way. Overcoming fear is a classic trope in many texts. Some see fear as an affliction, holding us back from achieving greater heights, while others see fear as a necessary part of living, especially in a society ruled by fear. The question is: does detaching ourselves from fear promote courage? Can fear ever serve a purpose? From a broader, more philosophical lens, how do you make sense of fear? What schools of thought do you ascribe to when you examine your own fears?
Historical: Think of a historical figure that you deem courageous, or a historical figure that has done something courageous. This could be a famous person, an ancestor, or a living loved one (history is made every day). What do you admire about this person? What allowed them to be courageous? What resources did they have/not have? In what ways does this person mirror you and your circumstances? Optionally, imagine they are sitting across from you. What questions would you ask them? What do you think they’d say?
Visual: In a web, put yourself at the centre of the page. From you, branch out with areas of your life where you feel fear. You may choose to put those fears in different sized bubbles, denoting more or less fear in each area. You may additionally choose to do the same with courage, colour-coding them differently.
Movement: Notice where feelings of fear and courage are stored in your body. When those feelings arise, move with them—this can look like a dance, a ritual, or even a meditation to move your breath through those areas.

Reflection

While trying to capture your relationship to fear and courage, did you experience any barriers/resistances? What were they, and how did you navigate through or around them?
Check in with a loved one who has known you for some time, especially one who has been in a shared situation that demands courage. Does this person agree with your understanding of fear and courage?
What would generate 1% more courage in your day to day?
Did you find yourself distancing yourself from your fear? If so, what does that look like?

Part 2: Building a Practice of Courage

Courage can look like many things: standing up for injustice, being honest, standing in solidarity, living up to your values, revealing your softest parts, patience, kindness, etc. I think of courage as a sliding scale on multiple planes. Nonetheless, I draw a lot of power from courageous people around me. One of those people, as mentioned in the introduction, is Chamomile. As this guide was borne from that conversation, I invited Chamomile to share their story. I was emotional reading it the first time, as these words capture so well the mythologies of courage I felt like I was trying to seek. Perhaps, as you're reading this, Chamomile's writing will shift something inside you too.

Note: The current iteration of Chamomile's writing is its purest, most honest form, in my opinion. It was typed out on a plane ride home, and I haven't made any changes. It doesn't feel right to edit courage, or change the energy I gathered from this piece. As such, please ignore any typos.

Thoughts on Courage 1.0

A conversation with a friend recently prompted me to write about courage. I haven’t really written anything that comes from the heart for a while, except the occasional letter or journal entry. And while I don’t know whether me writing these thoughts necessarily requires courage, it does require practice. And practice is what my musings on courage are all about.

I recently listened to one of my parents’ friends in the United States talk about their conservative, religious friend during an inter-continental virtual book club which my parents started to keep in touch with their friends. And to read banned books, and keep them alive. During the conversation said friend – seemingly frustrated – said: “I don’t have the skills or the talent to say anything.” Meaning that she felt like it required some natural ability to have these tough conversations with friends, to maybe call out the spread of false information, or the expression of harmful beliefs. I don’t think my parents’ friend is along in her feelings of powerlessness. In a world were leaders are put up on a pedestal, seemingly “born this way”, charismatic, natural, talented, it is not always easy to recognize and acknowledge that such characteristics lie in all of us.

A few weeks back, another conversation: I chat with a co-worker at the university – I am flattering myself by calling her a co-worker, she is a role model and mentor for me – and we somehow end up at the topic of hobbies. She wants to learn the ukulele and has committed to taking lessons for the next 8 months; whatever she knows then will be sufficient for her. “You know,” I remember saying, “I recently have been thinking about talents, and how ascribed talents in this society are either arts, sports or sciences.” She seems curious to see where I am going with this intriguing, but slightly random comment. “I sometimes feel like I don’t have talents,” I continue, and she raises her eyebrows, “but then I remember that talents can be anything. Social skills can be talents. Being good at bringing people together can be a talent. Organizing can be a talent.” She seems to recognize where I am going with this, and adds: “But you know, a lot of what we call ‘talents’ are actually skills we acquire through regular practice. Nobody is born knowing how to do stuff, we all practice it over time. So is it really talent, or is it practice?” This stuck with me. I am not here to debate the ins and outs of natural talent, and whether people are born with certain predisposed traits that make them more likely to be good at something. I believe it; and it makes us all beautifully unique and special. I also don’t know whether I would call courage a talent, but bear with me around this analogy. I am retelling the story because it, again, points to something I continue to think about in the context of courage: practice.

Third and last story for now. In May 2025 I was invited as a speaker to attend a weekend seminar hosted by a German foundation – which also provided me with a scholarship for university – on the topic of “emotions”. On the last night, an alum was playing a concert during which an inappropriate/harmful song lyric made a few of us pause and later decide that we should go talk to the artist afterwards to point out our disagreement with his lyric choices. Later that night I found myself standing with a group of friends when suddenly someone posed the question: “When was the last time you were courageous?” Great question, everyone agreed, and so everyone began to share. One friend had gone to a party by herself, not knowing anyone there. So brave, we agreed. Another friend in the circle had nominated herself for a committee within the foundation she was unsure she would be appointed to, potentially facing rejection. Rejection, yikes; we all nodded along. I spoke about how I had just gone to speak to the artist, and how he had received the feedback well. “Why did you do that,” a person in the circle asked me, “I mean, what made you decide to go speak to the artist?” he clarified his question. “It is a practice,” I told him. “If I cannot do it in such a safe environment, if I am not able to face discomfort with so many familiar faces around who can support me, how do I expect myself to speak up when something harmful happens out there? Consciously practicing this skill is important to me, because it does feel scary.” I am not telling this story to praise myself; I tell it because the question “Why did you do that?” is such an essential one to practicing courage, and is central to thinking about what it may look like to teach courage.

Teaching courage… is that possible? I am now thinking back to that boba shop with my good friend who continues to inspire me with their writing, and their envisioning of what they call throughtopias. I love this word they continued to coin, which they dropped in a sentence one day – probably on a car ride – without missing a beat, while telling me about their writing projects. They are nonchalant like that, a humble genius. As I, for the first time, now turn to this collectively dreamt project of envisioning a course on courage, I am guided by throughtopias. Change is a process, and so is courage. Of course, Paulo Freire (1989) comes to mind when thinking of praxis: a constant cycle of reflection and implementation that is key to the learning process; in Freire’s case that is praxis as anti-oppression. Other Black and Indigenous authors have written about courage and hope. ““Hope doesn’t preclude feeling sadness or frustration or anger or any other emotion that makes total sense. Hope isn’t an emotion, you know? Hope is not optimism. Hope is a discipline… we have to practice it every single day,” says Mariame Kaba. And who am I to muse about teaching courage when for so many Black, Brown, Indigenous, Trans, Queer friends’ and neighbors’ everyday(s) require(s) courage, and steadfastness. Courage, similar, to hope, we should then assume, for many is not a choice; it is a pre-condition for resistance, and thereby survival. At this point, my friend and I both know that a course on courage obviously needs to be rooted in these realities, in the stories and practices shared, and in the lessons learned. Maybe taking on the role of a curator, while remaining rooted in our own experiences, is there this is taking us?

Do we have to be courageous in order to teach courage? Yes and no. In German we have a colloquial expression that encapsulates a term alike to yes-no: jain. Yes, because I do think we are courageous people, in the multi-layered sense of the term. We enter relationships, we have tough conversations, we go out into the world, we sometimes challenge authority, we love each other, and we try to be open about our feelings. Those are all pretty courageous acts to begin with. And maybe these thoughts help us to recognize that courage is not – as so often portrayed – only found in the heroic acts of a firefighter saving a child from the third-floor balcony, or a pilot landing a plan on the Hudson River. No, because if there is anything I know at this point in my life it is that we are all constantly learning in relation to those we are in community with; and so I don’t see teaching courage as an external process, rather it necessarily also needs to be a practice that is congruent with the values any teacher would want to convey. Not to become all anarchic over here, but we are all teachers as much as we are all learners. One might argue that both are one and the same. We don’t need to nail the “courage thing” in order to teach it; we are teaching it because we want to learn about it. Understand ourselves better.

My sister often tells me: “I want to be brave like you.” More recently, she has switched the phrase up in a noteworthy way: “I want to practice being brave like you.” My sister, I believe, was not born any more or less courageous than I was; going back to the idea of natural talents or traits here. Without having zero backing to this theory, I wonder how sibling dynamics play into the development of courage (or other aspects of social life). I am a younger sibling, and I do wonder whether by nature of being able to navigate the world alongside a peer (my older sister) from basically the moment of my birth has given me a feeling of safety and confidence that have shaped the way I show up in spaces. Meanwhile, my older sister was her own reference point for a while in new, exciting but also confusing world. I am not trying to rain on anyone’s parade, and I am sure that there are plenty of examples of people who have a reversed experience. I guess what I am trying to say is: I do want to acknowledge that I do think a big chunk of my confidence and courage that I have today was gifted to me through my sister’s love and affirmation in those early years of my childhood.

Back at that boba shop, over dinner, my friend and I were contemplating what we had to contribute to this project. As I am furiously typing away on a plane ride home (my flight anxiety making me not feel very courageous at all), I smile at the thought of my friend having had typed out the kick-off post to this project by the next morning. They are brilliant. As a queer youth counsellor, they have many insightful reflection questions to pose. So that was the first section; done overnight. And then, nonchalantly (as always), they coin another term on the fly: the Possible. Reading their work encourages and enables me to put my dreams into words. Above the clouds, I am thinking of the Possible. During our conversation I said that I wanted to come up with little exercises, practices of courage. And that is still my intention; soon soon soon soon.

I am craving more time with my friend, at that very shop. I miss us sitting at the table in the corner under the bright screen advertising strawberry slushies. Maybe I will have to get boba soon, to keep thinking about courage.

Part 2: Reflection Questions

Courage and fear are not whole, binary entities. Where do you show up most courageous? Is there any aspect of your life where you are braver than you think?
How do we better understand what you find scary? How do we better challenge what is scary to you?

Small side story: I recently attempted to practice courage by building up tolerance for horror movies. I've always wanted to enjoy horror for its unique narrative elements, but often find myself too scared. I made a Letterboxd list and a friend reached out after seeing it. They gave me a few recommendations--I watched Carrie that night and loved it. The next day, they reached out with a new message after perusing my list again, "Wait, you watched Midsommar?" Yeah, it's one of my favourite movies, I told them. Maybe I need to rewatch it because I remember it not being scary at all. It might seem silly, but that was when I realized maybe I'm not "too scared to watch horror". Maybe I just don't like jump scares, that one horror sting sound, and ghosts.

Additional Resources

(Make sure this is at the end)

Rupert Read on Thrutopia - original Huffpost article, podcast interiew