I always hoped that if I met a cowboy it would be someone like Sam Elliot. You know the reluctant hero from all those westerns, someone quiet, grizzled, and meaner than dirt to anyone who looked at him-except an old yellow dog who he’d love more than the bad guys he’d shoot. Well I haven’t met that guy yet (I still have high hopes), but I have met some cowboys. A few years ago I even met a Canadian Cowboy. My buddy Greg is everything it means to be a cowboy—I mean a real cowboy. Sure he lives on a farm with horses, drives a truck, and has a huge yellow dog, but he’s more than that. Greg is a cowboy at his core. He’s got guts and seems to have an unwavering compass that helps him stay the course and sift through some of life’s trickier twists.
Last year I received a book from Greg called, Cowboy Values by James P. Owen. The book is great and could have been written by Greg himself. In the book Owen takes a critical look at the culture of the American West and the role that the cowboy traditionally played in the formation of that society. Owens paints a beautiful picture of the American Spirit and idealizes in the image of the cowboy. In his examination of our staple heroic icon Owen identifies seven Cowboy Values that he says are fundamental to the cowboy way of life.
The one that I continue to return to is the very first value: courage.
When Greg sent me Cowboy Values I was at the very beginning of a new chapter in my life. New responsibilities and a fear of the unknown were heavy on my mind, and more than once Greg (and others) worked to help me keep things in perspective. But of all the advice I received during that time I continue to return to the lessons about courage in Cowboy Values.
Owen writes that Courage is not just something you either have or you don’t, like everything else it grows. It grows from:
- Acknowledging fear and confronting it head-on
- Accepting risk, change, and failure as part of life
- Persevering despite the odds
- Standing up for what we believe
- Enduring hardship and adversity without complaint
- Being willing to make tough choices
- Living the life we want
As I reflect on these pearls of wisdom I find myself staring in the face of my fearful youth. They all seem so simple and evident when written down in bullet point. Even know it’s hard not to think, “Well yeah, of course that’s what it means to have courage.” But putting words and thoughts into action is another matter entirely. Think about it – the 10 Commandments, the 8 Fold Path, the 5 Pillars of Islam, the Beatitudes, etc. are all simple lists of how we should live and yet the application of these divine bullet points have eluded humanity for ages.
And so here we are faced with bullet points.
Courage involves things that we want: guts, a label as tough and capable, and even sometimes fame and glory. On the other side of the proverbial coin courage also requires us to taunt our fears, flirt with hardship and adversity, and sometimes even accept failure. This side of the coin is not so easy for us to accept. But as Greg reminded me, without the risk of failure (and past failures) you’ll never be able to fully appreciate the great things that do happen.
I tend to take myself a little too seriously sometimes and add to that my general passion for life and what I think is right and wrong – and there’s a recipe for inner turmoil. At a time when my courage seemed to be faltering Greg reminded me in a no-nonsense way that life sometimes just sucked and there were only two things you could do about it – let it beat you down (the easy way) or keep on going (the right way). Put in such simple terms there really wasn’t much of a choice for me and I simply chuckled and kept going.
The courage, optimism, self-reliance, authenticity, honor, duty, and heart of the cowboy is an ideal that made the American west a place where heroes were real and people looked out for each other. These are all traits that each of us strive for in our daily lives and we need look no further than our shared culture to find examples of these values in action today.
When I married Katie last October Greg became family. It seemed so natural that this Canadian Cowboy would join the ranks of my heroes, a group made up of EMTs, nurses, soldiers, actors, firefighters, teachers, USAF pilots, AmeriCorps Members, plumbers, farmers, and many more. Without his advice, support, and the occasional kick in the ass I wouldn’t have weathered the storms so well. I don’t know if I can ever say thank you enough—but I can say that I’m a better person for having this Canadian Cowboy in my life.
I’m still holding out to meet Sam Elliot in a bar someday, but I guess that will have to wait.
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