Courage Dear Heart
Courage is a curious creature who makes a home in our heart. We are gifted vast reserves of this virtue, cornerstone as it is of all the others and crucial ingredient for our forward motion through life.In so many languages, courage is a derivative from the word for heart. Cor (Latin). Coeur (French). Corazón (Spanish). In Turkish it literally translates as "the one with a heart". Courage is what we call on when we feel unsteady, shaky or fearful. It demands we steel ourselves and keep going. It allows us to proceed despite our bowel shaking insecurities and muddle headed reservations.Courage is a nudge within from a part of you that has already seen your triumph. The sacred sector that knows the sweetest portion of any victory is reserved for the vast courage it took to stare down the demons and monsters, those who would prevent or polarise your trajectory.Sometimes those vile beasts live around us or hide behind us. Worse is when they make a home inside us, dressed up as procrastination or perfectionism, insecurity or hopelessness, comparison or craven defeatism. They mooch about poking holes in our ideas and hauling our arses back into the quagmire of past mistakes or lessons learned the hard way, too late. It is our courage that will not let them whine for long, nor win.Courage is ordinary and common, a mundane miracle who always has a seat at the table of our every endeavour. It is the siren call of our heart that rises above the din and clatter. It is who and how we are built, when all is said and done. Courage is not a guarantee of success but it is undoubtedly a measure of it.Under lionhearted skies with our brains and bellies all fired up, you can anticipate long moments of shuddering as the pre-eclipse slingshot pulls back. Do not let that mean kid in your head make you doubt yourself or your path. You have seen where you are headed. Everybody starts before they are ready having bitten off way more than a mouthful. You don't need the medal or the chest puffed out on which to pin it.You need only listen to the quieter voice within, a direct line to your hummingbird heart and the nest in which it made its home, your courage.© Kerrie Basha, 2017