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Question

What does courage mean now? Sarah Francis


Answer

Benson Venegas: Sarah, sometimes in life you feel that because of your opinion, you're standing alone. And that's the moment when you should feel that you should continue. Many years ago, in 1992, there was something where everyone have their faith that was gonna change the history of the planet. And what happened in 1992 was the earth's - first Earth Summit in Rio. Was the first time leaders around the world came together and make major decisions for us to have a better planet. The reality was that ten years or eight years after there was the result of that was Rio plus zero minus zero. There was almost few advancements. Many countries had changes government [over a] five or seven years, and there was no follow-up in decisions or policy or agreements or commitments that was made by previous governments. So, there was a force or a process to try to make a change of the situation. And in the second Earth Summit in Johannesburg, when everyone thought that there were gonna be also major commitments from governments, the result was, more - some governments, some of the most powerful governments, didn't - decided some very important things that were gonna have positive impact; intense issue like global warming, for instance. So, the people that was at Johannesburg found that there was a situation of a loss of hope. But then, from there, we came up with the courage, the spirit, that the only thing that was gonna make difference for humanity in the future was personal actions and personal responsibility. So people stand up and have the commitment that we, as individual, we need to make the difference. We need to make the difference in our societies, we need to make the difference in our communities, in our countries, and internationally. We need to take actions. We need to take responsibility, and that means courage. That sometimes when you take these steps, you’d feel that you’re alone on yourself. But there is when you need to continue.