The words courage and trust have been coming up a lot for me lately. Perhaps it’s my age.
At 44, I can’t be sure if I’m closer to coming or going. And there seems to be a fair bit of both happening around me right now: celebrations of new babies concurrently with friends struggling with illness or grief. A couple of weeks ago a pal (and parent to two young children) fell 70 feet while climbing and miraculously escaped relatively unscathed. I can think of several friends currently battling or recovering from cancer.
The threat or experience of death certainly makes one take stock.
None of this is meant to be maudlin. These facts act as compass points. They are markers showing me that I need to live my life with as much passion as I can muster (which arguably can be minimal betwixt parenting, work, nurturing relationships, and not getting enough sleep). Each reminder wholeheartedly shouts in my face: carpe diem. Seize the day.
I’ve always worn my heart on my sleeve when it came to letting people in my life know how I feel about them – and fortunately most of them can handle it when I say “I love you.” I’m keenly aware that we never know for certain what the future holds and I’m loathe to carry regret. If I have the chance to tell someone that I think they are an inspiration in any way, shape or form, I tell them. Similarly, if I see that I can brighten someone’s day with a compliment or gesture, I will go out of my way to express it.
Author Meg Rosoff wrote in her novel What I Was about the presumed experience of turning 100: “The most intense moments will seem to have occurred only yesterday and nothing will have erased the pain and pleasure, the impossible intensity of love and its dog-leaping happiness, the bleak blackness of passions unrequited, or unexpressed, or unresolved.”
It’s the last bit that gets me the most – the anticipated emptiness of not following one’s bliss, not living life in a manner parallel to one’s heart.
The most tragic thing I can think of is coming to the end of one’s life and realizing that you didn’t listen closely enough to your gut to live your own truth, that you ignored the signposts along the way because of fear or guilt.
That’s where courage comes in. You need to have a heart open enough to recognize them – because sometimes they will appear as neon signs, other times only a scratch in the dirt – and the fortitude to change course when it’s called for.
If things don’t go the way we intend, then that’s what was meant to be; there’s the trust. But if we simply let life happen to us, passively standing by and accepting what does or does not come, then we won’t have lived up to our end of the bargain, to experience joy, love and connection. Ultimately, we will be left with that bleakness of which Rosoff writes.
It’s fundamental that we are kind, compassionate and big-hearted, and I’ve come to see that we must start closest to home. We all deserve to live authentically, to feel inspired, and delight in good things. After all, that’s what we want for those we love, isn’t it? A life fulfilled? I suspect it’s what they want for us, also.
No one loses out because of our happiness; rather, quite the opposite. We all stand to gain.a
