We wake up in the morning and if our minds are open to the flow of past memories, something shows up that wants our attention.
A project we didn’t complete, mistakes that were made, opportunities that weren’t taken, things that weren’t said or were said.
Regrets.
And we think, was courage absent?
Did we give it our best? And if not, why not?
Were we living on the edge?
If not, why not?
Were we communing with ourselves? Or were too busy for that priceless dialogue?
Ever doubt that we have courage?
Look again. It’s there. Anxious to be called forth. Just waiting to be summoned. Ready to spring into action.
We all have courage. We come with it. It’s part of the equipment that nature gives us to do battle in our lives.
Like muscle, if we don’t use it, it withers away, may even go into hiding, but it never disappears entirely. So long as we have breath.
And what a joy it is to see it step forward.
In our daily battle for existence, all steps require some degree of courage to say ‘I’m here. I am alive.’
If we make mistakes, let’s fix them and learn from them.
Courage will be the first to admit that exercising it comes with mistakes.
To not exercise it daily is to bury ourselves, little by little.
We can call courage by another name, say affirmation. I prefer the word courage.
It’s raw, summons defiance, quiet or loud, small or large, shy or outrageous.
As the river that each of us is streams through life, courage is the force that defines us.
‘He/she did this. He/she did that.’
Each act of creation an act of courage.
And every day of our lives demands acts of creation or else we atrophy, shrivel, devalue our possibilities.
There’s too much to do in life. Too much injustice, too much ignorance, too much violence, too much indifference, too much conceit, for us to remain aloof.
The river that each of our lives is needs to flow to enrich other lives and by that measure our existences will be judged to have been worthy or not.
Because there is that possibility, isn’t there? The possibility that our lives will amount to nothing at all. To have existed and done nothing.
To have benefitted from other people’s efforts but contributed zero to the human project.
Every morning, upon awakening, life demands that we be courageous.
That we improve our existences and impact that of others.
Succumb to fear or face it.
Facing our past mistakes is facing our history. The book of our life opens a page every morning.
So let us read it. It is there to show us the path forward.
There, for us to write in our choices.
Oscar Valdes 