Courage...

Courage

My life is full of courageous people. People who have no fear of brawls, of heights, of adventures. But even those who appear chock-full of raging courage have a seed of cowardice in them.

It's not that fear is wrong. It serves a purpose. It's just that some sorts of courage are greater and more useful than others. So that some cowardices, in my eyes, wipe out the courages with whom they share bodies.

True courage is heart courage.

True courage is the person who follows the love in their heart, in spite of the fact that the love leads to a person that isn't their "type" or isn't agreeable to their friends. Or is even a love that challenges their pre-conceived ideas of what their future would be.

True courage is walking away from a relationship sometimes. Not just if it's bad, but if you're settling. If it's nice and fun but you know it's not what you really want long term. It's that courage to be alone. To set both yourself and the other person free to find someone who is an excellent future and a better fit instead of, for instance, fun sex and a pleasant today.

True courage is building friendships and holding them, whether your other friends like that person or not. Whether your friend has the same style and tastes as you or not. And not sitting back while your other friends say unkind things about that person. But defending them as real friends do.

True courage is seeing when the people you have called friends are not that at all and recommitting your energies to those friends who treat you as you deserve. Seeing when the person you've loved for months or years has ceased to be good for you and moving on with grace, in spite of heartbreak.

True courage is the person who follows the tuggings of spirit. In the face of popular opinion or one's own profession of atheism (or any other spiritual path), they allow their soul to guide them to truth. And they hold to that truth.

True courage is commiting to a cause, a relationship, a life change that feels right in the heart, however difficult the path looks or however far that path seems from what earlier versions of you wanted. Overcoming the fears to commit.

True courage is integrity. Holding to the path, whatever the situation, that you know is true, because of the direction your heart points.

I'd give, and have given, every man willing to jump into a fight, for one man willing to follow his heart in spite of popular opinion. In spite of old convictions. In spite of the hard work of it. That's the man I really want with me in the fight of life.

That's the courage I really want to perfect in myself.

amberbird.com