Friday, August 05, 2005

Two kinds of will

A friend and I came to an agreement the other day that there are two kinds of will. There is the will which is the action and the will which is the intention.

To have the will to do something could merely mean that you have the intention of accomplishing whatever it is you want to do. Whether or not you accomplish it is irrelavent. To will your self to accomplish something means you finish whatever it was you set out to do whether or not you feel like it.
This conversation was brought about by a definition I heard for the word courage: "To will yourself to do what ought to be done in the face of opposition."
After discussing this, we came to the conclusion that the will used in the definition is implying an action. You cannnot merely intend on doing something and be considered courageous. But then what does it mean to be courageous?
That was the main topic for the week at the Torrey camp. Needless to say we never came to a good enough definition of the word, however we had some excellent dialogue about it!!

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