Working Courage

    Hello Mr. Fear, 

January 23 

  

      

You are everywhere. 
                You are in all places.

                        Outside and Inside,
                        Beneath and Above, 

           Creation and Cessation. 

             

            

Some nights You kept me safe in stillness. 

Some nights You helped me disappear. 

Some nights shrill screams of terror.

All nights confined squalls, laden tears.    

Brick by brick, stone on stone 

You dig, 
You dig,You dig. 
You find bone. 

Is blood red in the dark?  

Desolate weed desperate for rain, 
tattered, castoff 

left. 

January 15

Too everything indeed.

Too all things confirmed.

Risk is barren when slain    

Empty equates pain 

 

You talk to nothing

Nothing calls to You, 

Sing "hitherto, hitherto onto" 

With Love, 

    Courage

An Exercise of Courage

      

 

Reflection

Inspired by the book Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert, the following words are contemplations and considerations regarding this thing called "courage" and how it impacts us subtly and not so subtly. 

Courage, in my opinion, is an individualistic, internalized art reflective of strength. This strength is often difficult to recognize let alone define. It lives on a continuum from survival to outlandish. It manifests itself through both movement and stagnancy. Courage has a best friend, partner, and confidant named Fear. Fear influences courage to be very quiet, move quickly, or brace for pain.  Often fear and courage argue inside us. Loudly. 

For me, the above "poem" and photos of my "art" created my fear to yell and scream.  It said, "that's not even a poem", "what are you doing", "you are going to fail", and "STOP".  Even now fear is rolling its eyes and forcing my fingers to add quotation marks around the words "poem" and "art". My fear, a.k.a. Mr. Fear, wants any readers to know that I do in fact understand how un-artful my art is.

Luckily, there is courage. I like to think that my courage is similar to most and runs in size from small to medium. My courage doesn't always live personified like Mr. Fear. Unlike Mr. Fear, my courage has a high metabolism and needs constant feeding to be viable. Mr. Fear, on the other hand, is ....well, he's chubby. 

Giving courage what it needs is a complex and precarious business. Courage is art. Courage is artful. Courage acknowledges Mr. Fear and works to peek outside of the seemingly safe darkness.  Courage is that state of colorful curiosity that sometimes needs the support of others. Sometimes it needs a change in perspective. Sometimes, for me, courage needs questions. 

Finding out how to feed our courage is no small task. My courage's appetite changes depending on circumstances and goals. Talking to courage can be helpful.  Some of the questions I like to ask my courage are: "What would you regret more?", "What's the worst that can happen?", "What do you want?", "How do you want to live?", "Who do you want to be?", and "What are you doing to get there?". While I don't always get answers, I do receive lots of eye rolls from Mr. Fear which makes the effort worthwhile.  These questions, for me, are an objective pathway to giving Mr. Fear a loud "S.T.F.U". 

Judgment and culture will invariably feed Mr. Fear. Experiences and the need for connection can feed Mr. Fear. Time after time, negative self-talk reinforces Mr. Fear. Mr. Fear lives everywhere.  He thrives in all of our tolerance zones keeping us regulated, agitated, and frozen.  In my opinion, courage is a place on the cusp of dysregulation with its paintbrush, fingers, or toe narrowly grounding 

us with sweet reminders.  Our humanness is good.  We will be o.k.