animi firmitas
What endures has always endured. Fortitude is not the absence of fear. It is the refusal to be moved by what ought not to move a person who has seen clearly.
Fortitude is not granite. Granite shatters. Fortitude is closer to a tree in a high wind — rooted, and therefore free to move.
Seneca, writing to Lucilius, said that a great part of wisdom is being undisturbed by what disturbs others. He did not mean to be cold. He meant to be clear.
Every child has known a moment of unreasonable courage — a moment before the world trained them to be small. Is fortitude a thing we build, or a thing we return to?