“What would you do if you had no fear?”
That question eats away at me all the time. It rings in my ears whenever I wish I had said or done something different, asserted myself or stood up for someone else, but let the moment pass. I think of it more and more now that fear increasingly dominates my life.
But I have such a deep longing to act with courage. The times in my life when I have acted with courage have not always been ‘successful,’ strictly speaking, for courage is not a strategy. It’s more of a moral code, I guess, a combination of deep integrity and a willingness to do ‘the honorable thing’. However, I have always felt more at peace with the courageous decisions than the decisions I made to hedge my bets, even if they ended in disaster. (And quite honestly, they have usually ended in disaster. Someday I will write a hilarious book about it all.) Often we think of courage as a martial quality, the fire in the bellies of soldiers or firefighters or other people who regularly put themselves in danger or take serious risks. That is undoubtedly true. But I think courage also involves acting from the heart, and that can mean a million different things depending on the heart in question.
Some background: I thought I had found my purpose in life (which was phenomenally stupid of me, I know), and I was passionate about it. Now I am disillusioned. I have to find a new purpose, and I don’t know what it is yet. What I do know is that I have always loved writing, and I have always loved creating beautiful things. Whether that’s a poem or an outfit or a drawing, whatever I do, whatever I make, I want it to be beautiful. Some people value efficiency, some people value trendiness, some people value ease, and I value beauty. I spend most of my free time chasing after it in some way already. This blog is an attempt to do that more constructively.