Greetings from the snow lands!!!
Several people recently have said I have courage. As I sit here looking out the window at snow, blue sky and my shoveled out little red car, I am curious as to what it really means to have courage. Awhile back, when talking with a friend the topic came up as she said how courageous it was for me to head off to a place I didn’t know (Mancos) and people I didn’t know (it takes about ten minutes to find as many new friends here). I did not feel courageous; it is “just the next step in my life”.
Then I began to wonder why I felt this way and also what it really is “to have courage”.
In the context of my life, what takes courage, is to make a change when what I have been living is no longer supporting what I have become. It takes courage to listen to inner promptings and then follow through with them. I will tell you honestly that to drive across country or to head to Yellowstone for a five-month stay, is very do-able for me, actually a fun and exciting adventure.
Each of us has our own natural inclinations and our own ways of being that to others may seem powerful, outrageous, glorious and very brave in living them. The actual doing of them is who we are. It is NOT difficult for me to drive hither and yon; it is easy for me to live in mountain cabins, to move to strange and new places with new people and ways of being. Traveling for me is just something done with a little forethought and commitment to the journey. (kind of like our stay on Earth!) We each have gifts and abilities that are just what we “came in with”. I have ALWAYS been an adventurer, a lover of all things foreign and one who thoroughly enjoys meeting new people from all walks of life, nations and backgrounds. I was brought up with a close connection to Nature and the Earth as something to respect and definitely not to be afraid of, just a part of the Life around me. It does not occur to me to be afraid of the deep woods of Yellowstone or the quiet back roads of New England. To have respect for these places, yes. Fear, no.
What takes courage for me is to know that even though I may “rock the boat”, even though I am filled with “what ifs”, even though I may have a pang of “guilt” for not being responsible to supposed tasks that have been prescribed as to what a “mother does”, “what a community member does”, what a “NORMAL person does” (that’s always been a zinger for me). “Oh, dear, God, what is NORMAL?!?” (For what it is worth, I now don’t believe there is such a thing as “normal”). :)
True courage is to be enough attuned to my inner workings and connection with Life that when something needs to change, when something is no longer appropriate, when I feel so drawn to do or be something new that all I can do is move into that, to take a stand when needed regardless of how many others “are with me”, to tell my truth, to be patient with my learning and growing, to be kind to myself and others when my upbringing would tell me to be otherwise, to “get out of my own way” and to let Life move through me—these are what to me, take courage and bravery in Life.
I am curious as to what courage means to you and would love to read your comments. Happiest of New Years from alternately sunny and snowy Mancos! Blessings, Emily
Emily A. Easton(c)2009
