i am aware of my moments of cowardice, as they are occurring. i either talk myself out of the correctness of the emotion, making extrapolations and excuses, or i sit with the emotion and let the anvil of it bear down on my heart. every now and then, some sort of false childhood lesson pops up and complicates these moments but, in general, my experience of my own cowardice is correct and here's the deal: when one feels themself slide into cowardice, that is the call to action. that is the moment to stand rather than slump. that is the instinct meant to call your Better Angel forth.
and so i accept that if i am able to correctly identify moments of my own cowardice 99% of the time, so, too, can others. whether or not one answers the call to amend their own behavior in the moment of experiencing this emotion (an instinct to ethical dealing) is a choice. having a substantial enough apparatus of integrity necessary to enacting that change might be the real issue, but responding to the initial call to combat ones own cowardice with real movement (in deed and word) in an ethical direction is one of the big methods by which that apparatus is built.
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