This Sense-sational Life is a blogging series that explores the senses as a way of cultivating a more mindful, connected life. This week’s post touches on a Sense of Courage and how it can shift over ones lifetime…especially in regards to our courage to be creative.
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It starts with remembering that something of you was forgotten….somehow some essence of the self hidden.
And in a shift from hurried to a somewhat slower pace or perhaps found in-between breaths where you wait for the next exhalation, you hear it.
It calls out from someplace far away, the desire to bring what was lost forth. But it is not so far away that it can’t be heard. Not so far away that it can’t be felt, and certainly not so far away that it can’t be reached.
That’s when you check yourself….that’s when you sense it….courage.
Yes, it is beckoning you to a cause, to a personal revolution, to a single-focused commitment to something more dear than you will ever commit to….to yourself. Yes, in the course of your life you will commit to others. To child, lover, parent, to the stranger who needs what you have to offer, to a cause that needs a champion…..
but none of these get full value, if you don’t first commit to self. If you never commit, you can never give them the most lovely of gifts… you. You can not model for them how to fully love, to fully trust, to fully give and receive.
It is all very lofty, this talk of courage and places in the self. But it is also very real when we feel disconnected from something so vital. If we are honest, it is dark and dank like the earth because it is a story that we bury inside of us. Often, we put our creativity away sometime in childhood and if we are lucky, we find the courage to stand up for it while it makes its way to the surface.
The thing about courage is that it can be tricky. Say for example that we put our creativity away because it was threatened. Perhaps what we expressed was criticized or never given the attention it needed. Putting it away to protect it is a way of being courageous. So where in the story does the courage get screwed up?
It happens as we grow up. When we were young any power we had was allowed to us by the adults around us. Our lives were tied to their will. And as sometimes happens with humans, we may have gotten hurt or misunderstood. Often just as a course of living. We send our little creative spirits into hiding if they don’t feel safe. Then, as an adult, if we find the creativity is calling out to be recognized, we have the opportunity to assure its safety.
What has changed? We are in charge of our lives. We have the choice to set boundaries and create safety. That is one of the great honors of adulthood….we get to create our lives!
And we are given a Sense of Courage to help us get there.
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The focus for This Sense-sational Life this week is cultivating a Sense of Courage. Where can you envision yourself stepping more fully into your courage, setting a boundary to make yourself feel safe? The Creativity Tribe would LOVE to hear from you in the comments. I will keep the conversation going on the Creativity Tribe FB Page.
