Courage

"May you speak and act with confidence and use courage to follow your own path."

Courage. This is a tough one.  Because it's not something that you can find and hold onto. It is ever-changing. Courage is more like an outfit, while some of the other gifts are more akin to tattoos. Courage comes and goes. It doesn't define you, as does your inner beauty or your inner strength. It is what allows you to radiate such personal attributes. Courage is also something that I feel at this point in my life, I have never had a firm grasp on.

I could write a book about courage's presence, or lack of, in my life at different points, but for this purpose I'll focus on courage in my life now. This is actually a very pressing matter that has been on my mind quite a bit lately.

The operative phrase in the book's description of courage, to me, is "use courage to follow your own path." Especially "your own path." My own path. Well, to start, before I can really even use or have courage, I need to have a path. The path is exactly what I have been struggling with lately.

I have found in the past few years that I have become a hardened person. Life has worn on me. For anyone who really knows me and the circumstances that have defined my life in the past few years, it is understandable how one can become cynical and hardened, although that is not the only possbile outcome (thus what I am trying to change).

From 2006-2008 were two especially terrible years. I suppose, in its own strong way, courage was one of the gifts that got me through them. Yet it was in the midst of those years, in such intense adversity, that I found a true and clear path for myself. I discovered who I wanted to be, how I wanted to view life, and what I wanted others to remember when they thought of me. Prior to those years, I'd striven to be everything to everyone -- the perfect person. I wanted to be caring and tender but sarcastic and witty at the same time. I wanted to be edgy and fearless while being sympathetic and humble. I was rolling myself thin with my attempts to have a jack-of-all-trades personality.

When I was forced to take time to see where I had been, where I was and take note of where I was headed on my path, I realized I was going nowhere, because I didn't have a clue where I wanted to go. I very clearly defined myself in that incredibly vulnerable time period. And yet here I am today, two years later, finding myself back at the crossroads, wondering where I am headed and where I want to be headed, and how to reconcile the two.

Specifically, the compassion and groundedness I had so valued in my life before had all but vanished with a phase of social obsession recently. It is so easy to get caught up in letting your path be defined by what jeans you own, what street you live on, how much your salary is, where you work (or who you work for), what brand names you own, or, my weakness, which designer you're touting on your feet.

I think back to 2006, when everything I wore for an entire month was straight from Goodwill or sewn by my own grandmother's hands; when I didn't take a real shower for the entire four weeks, or any type of shower at all for an entire week; when I was covered in dust and dirt and grit and snot from the most beautiful places and people; when I left everything I owned, knew and loved behind for Africa.  And it was then that I realized that I want to be a person with substance rather than a person with possessions. But today's world is brutal when it comes to substance vs. possession, and such a decision has to be intentionally kept.

I daily have to remind myself that knowing where I am on my path and where I want to go is one of the most important to-do's on my list. How can I have the courage to let my beauty and strength shine through if I have allowed a detour to suppress them deep within me?

So maybe I was mistaken. To me, the courage to follow your own path isn't really the hard part of this gift; it's the staying on your path part that is the real challenge. For others, the issue may be the exact opposite. But I find that I am very easily distracted and swept along in the tides of materialism and status and the need to be as perfect as we somehow see our movie stars as being. My courage is less about speaking and acting with confidence and more about intentionally following my own path. Every. Single. Day.