On the Vice of Cowardice

 

A little over a year ago, I took up Brazilian jiu-jitsu, though I am far from a typical martial arts practitioner. I am skinny, unathletic, and never competed seriously in any sport, let alone a combat sport. Why then did I, at the age of 30, decide to take up something like jiu-jitsu? The short answer is that, for some time, I had been preoccupied with the idea of cowardice. This preoccupation may, on the face of it, seem silly. To call someone a coward in this day and age feels old-fashioned. It’s an insult that one Victorian gentleman might render to another in a matter of honor. The word coward may call up the same wry smile as such old-fashioned insults as “blackguard” or “ne’er-do-well.” For many years, I took for granted that this reframing of cowardice was good. It meant that we had matured as a society and weren’t beholden to outdated moral codes. We no longer judge people by silly shows of useless bravery. Instead, we’ve learned more critical values like compassion and understanding.

 Gradually, however, I have altered my perception. All too often, cowardice isn’t taken seriously as a vice the same way gluttony, greed, or maliciousness is, though it deserves to be. The consequences of cowardice can be every bit as serious as any other vice, and the only way to combat it is, to be honest about what it is and then do something about it. Rather than suffering from insufficient compassion, we are in the throes of having too much. Or perhaps we suffer from the outward shows of kindness at the expense of all other values. Too often, we don’t speak the truth because we fear it will hurt someone’s feelings. While there is genuine merit in seeing things from another’s perspective, this can’t allow us to lose everything of value that we may already hold. If someone comes to us and tells us that something we said has hurt them, it’s good form to reflect on whether we said something un-constructive. However, sometimes such self-reflection shows us that even though what we said may have been harsh, it was still the truth. We can say that the other person is free to disagree with us, but we must stand by what we say.

In addition to these general cultural concerns, my preoccupation with cowardice had manifested in my personal life. This problem first preoccupied me when, a few years back, I took the OCEAN, or the Big Five, Personality Traits test. For those unfamiliar with the test, the five traits for which the acronym OCEAN stands are: openness—the attraction to novelty and new ways of thinking, conscientiousness—one’s devotion to duty and task execution, extraversion—the measure of one’s positive emotion, agreeableness—how likely one is to care for others over themselves, and neuroticism—the measure of one’s negative emotion. While several parts of my results were no great surprise to me, I was shocked to discover that I scored in the 29^th percentile of Agreeableness, a trait I had assumed I would score highly in. After recovering from my surprise, however, this information began to make sense, especially when I considered my results on another of the Big Five traits: neuroticism. In neuroticism, I scored moderately high: the 64^th percentile. This revelation was no surprise to me, but when I considered it alongside my relatively low score in agreeableness, it got me thinking hard about my self-image.

I had always taken for granted that I preferred to avoid conflict because I saw the best in people and could see things from everyone’s point of view. While there is some truth in this, it likely comes from my high score in openness—96^th percentile—rather than from agreeableness. I am genuinely intrigued to discover new perspectives on various issues. I took many of these other aspects of my personality matter-of-factly, but for some reason, my low score in agreeableness bothered me, though there were no clear reasons why it should have.

After all, neuroticism, like any personality trait, isn’t a judgment of one’s character. People all along the spectrum of neuroticism exist for a reason. Different situations and environments pose different levels of potential danger. Someone like myself who is high in neuroticism is more likely to imagine what potential hazards a novel situation might hide. While people like us need to differentiate between testing a new environment for real dangers and avoiding a new environment due to imagined threats, we can prove very useful. People on the opposite end of the spectrum are equally predisposed to failure if they don’t exercise dispassion when implementing their temperament. They can see the opportunities in a new environment but also imagine possibilities that aren’t there and fail to see the dangers. Should they do the former, they can bring significant value to themselves and those around them. If they do the latter, they can rush headlong into a dangerous situation and suffer unexpected consequences that could have been avoided if they had observed their situation more critically.

Such sober reflection wasn’t my first reaction when I considered this fact. Perhaps I could have been too hard on myself, but when I continued to think on these unconsidered facts about myself now staring me in the face, I knew deep in my gut that something else was at play. I didn’t think of myself as someone who avoided or withdrew from conflict because it made logical sense to avoid conflict in that time or place. I first thought I didn’t like conflict because I care about other people’s feelings.

What then was going on? After trying to rationalize the issue several times, I reached an uncomfortable conclusion. There had been many instances in my life when I had succumbed to the vice of cowardice and retroactively reframed my motivation as compassion. So, I decided to confront this tendency in myself head-on. Whenever conflict reared its head and I wanted to duck out, I would ask myself why. Did I want to avoid conflict because it was honestly the right thing to do or because I was scared? Occasionally, I would find that I had a good reason to avoid unnecessary conflict.  On many other occasions, however, I feared the consequences of speaking up or speaking back. I was worried that people would lose the perception of a compassionate considerate person, which for so long had been the perception I had held of myself. Gradually, I started to tap into the less agreeable side of my personality.

If I’m honest, my initial attempts didn’t immediately yield a more commanding and authoritative personality but manifested as delayed adolescence. Previously, I had been a risk-averse rule follower. For the most part, I had never spent much time with the people my mother warned me about as one usually does in high school, but later in life, I struck up an unusual friendship. This friend possessed many qualities that I admired: he was ambitious and strong-willed, but he was also infamous among our mutual friends for getting into fights. He had even done some prison time for assault. He had once asked me to work for him. When he first asked me, I had had a comfortable restaurant job and had turned him down. Then the COVID pandemic struck, and the restaurant closed. I figured this was as good a time as any to get a new job and hang around with someone who didn’t seem to have any of the problems I had with accessing his disagreeable side. So, I called my friend and asked if he was still looking for workers. Sure enough, he was. The work was difficult, and balancing the personal side of my relationship with my friend with the professional side was often very stressful. I’m sad to say that this relationship flamed out in both the personal and professional spheres.

Despite this discouraging failure, if it hadn’t been for my time with this person, I might never have started jiu-jitsu. Before my friend and I parted ways, we took on another friend of his as a customer. This friend soon invited both of us to start training jiu-jitsu at his gym, and we accepted. The first six months, in particular, were very grueling. However, even when I spent an entire 5-minute round getting smashed by a more competent opponent, I would still feel immense satisfaction just for having voluntarily undergone something like that. Now I still go, even when I don’t feel like it. I always feel good when I decide to go because I know it’s good medicine. As much as we would like to think otherwise, we need a carrot and a stick to discipline ourselves. I look forward to working on my jiu-jitsu game and learning new submissions and sweeps, but I also go because it is a defense against a very serious vice.

Now that I take cowardice seriously as a vice, I actually look with greater objectivity at the neurotic side of my personality. In the past, I would veer between a defensive and romanticized attachment to this part of myself, soothing my ego with the self-image of an imaginative but misunderstood loner, and feelings of insecurity that there was something wrong with this side of my personality, and I would start to wish that I could change it. Now I see this side of myself with measured compassion. Now, when I avoid conflict, I don’t have to beat myself up because I know it’s just part of my temperament, but I can also control it when I see that it is genuinely time to stop being a coward.