My resources are tight right now and my mood is not good. Neither of those can be allowed to arrest the development of courage.

The usual picture of bravery is a charge after sufficient preparation. That is not bravery, that is execution. Bravery is narrower and much less comfortable: it is taking the step while resources are short and the road ahead is unknown.

The definition matters because it changes what courage requires. If courage needed resources first, courage would only ever be the shadow of resources — something the comfortable can afford to display. Defined the other way, courage is the one quality available to a person in deficit, at full strength, on the same day.

Courage also does not remove fear. What it does is smaller and more useful. In the darkest hour it gives you enough light to take one more step. And years later, when you look back, it gives you something to be comforted by: that at the point where you had no guarantee, you chose to move.

Resources can be replenished. Roads can be scouted. The step you did not take at the moment it was available cannot be recovered.