Northern Courage
Last Friday I shared a long-form essay about something I’ve been wrestling with privately.
It felt scrapbook-worthy — a moment in the unfolding story.
This week, for fun and for truth, I’m revisiting that essay in smaller pieces.
Partly because our lives themselves are drafts.
We write, revisit, revise, discover new layers, and keep going.
Our thoughts aren’t always to be trusted —
but they are meant to be examined.
So today, I want to talk about Northern Courage.
The core idea is simple, and severe:
There are fates worse than death.
Tolkien shows us this in Théoden’s speech at the Battle of the Pelennor Fields.
The Riders of Rohan stand on a hill, staring down an army that vastly outnumbers them.
They know the truth.
They cannot win.
And yet — they ride.
Not because they’re optimistic.
Not because they believe in a miracle.
But because they believe in Northern Courage —
the ethic that says some ways of living, and some ways of dying, are preferable to others.
To turn back would be to die already.
Courage here isn’t positivity.
It’s not hope.
It’s meaning.
It’s an orientation toward life that says:
how you meet what is inevitable matters.
You see this same ethic in the Samurai’s code of honor.
In Socrates, who could have avoided death but chose not to betray his principles.
Some people call that foolish.
Others recognize it immediately in their bones —
because they know there are things worth dying for.
And beneath that recognition is something even older and more uncomfortable.
A primal truth.
Because the opposite of riding isn’t just fear —
it’s freeze.
And that leads to the confrontational question beneath it all:
Is there anything worse than cowardice?
We’ll talk about that tomorrow.
For now, here’s where this lands for me.
Each of us — me included — will stand on a hill one day,
looking down at a force that vastly overpowers us.
We’ll know that moving forward is foolish.
That it may end in failure.
That it may cost us everything.
And still…
there will be a moment when courage calls.
All of us will stand where Théoden stood.
All of us will see certain defeat.
And in the story of our lives, it will matter
whether we ride anyway.
That moment has already happened to me.
It will happen again.
The only real question is:
What will my story be?