“Cowards die many times before their deaths; the valiant never taste of death but once.”
— Shakespeare
In Sicily we have a saying:
“U scantatu mori ogni jornu, u curaggiusu na vota sula.”
The fearful die every day, the courageous only once.
It is more than a poetic echo: fear is a toll we pay on life in advance, interest charged on dangers that may never come.
Each hesitation, each retreat from a challenge, is like holding a funeral for a possibility — burying what might have been before it has the chance to live.
Courage is not the absence of fear; it is the refusal to attend those daily funerals. It is the decision to step forward while the heart still trembles, accepting that the only true risk is the one we face in its appointed hour — and that until then, we are fully alive.
For leaders, this is the measure of resolve: to confront the moment when choice can no longer be delayed, to speak when silence would be safer, to act when the outcome is uncertain.
Those who lead with courage write their story in one complete chapter; those who lead through fear live and die in fragments.