Notice how the word “courage” is the center of that word.   To encourage is to give courage.   Courage is the most important tool we need to forge through difficulty. Being discouraged is the end, temporarily or permanently, of one’s ability to soldier on.

Usually, weighed down with our own troubles, distracted by many distractions, we don’t notice how easy and essential encouragement is.   We may think that nobody encourages us, and we do fine, so what the hell?

I get a call from an old friend whenever his wife, an active volcano, erupts.   She broke the stained glass window of the room he rents to escape from her wrath.   I hear the story, try to be sympathetic, but do I really encourage him?   I give him advice about his strategy, tell him why answering her rage with his own anger may not be the best approach.   He gets slightly defensive, and it’s hard to blame him.   He called for encouragement, he got a bit of possibly helpful, definitely unwanted, advice.

“You are in a war, unfortunately, and every war is different.   I think you’re doing a great job finding ways to hold your enemy at bay.   I commend you, and strength to your arm,” would have been a more encouraging response.

When I told a friend recently that I, with an idealistic and so far unpaid program to save doomed children, am like the man on the falling plane exhorting others to put their oxygen masks on before helping others– while not wearing my own, I secretly hoped he would disagree.   He nodded sadly, thought the image was very apt.    It had the opposite of an encouraging effect, no matter how realistic the image might have been.

When a friend is engaged in a difficult or even impossible quest, do we encourage them or do them more of a favor by gently trying to bring them back into the real world, unacceptable as that real world might be?    Silence, of course the most obvious option, generally does little to advance either of these mercies.