Is bravery required to live the best version of your life? What does being brave even mean anyway? Do personal practices that provide insight, like meditation, bring us home to who we really are? And does this allow us to make the brave choices we must make if we want to grow and live our lives with open arms and hearts?
I am part of a writing group and our prompt for this week was to choose a quality and write about it as if it were a person. I chose the word bravery. Here’s what I submitted:
Bravery lives in a house she built herself. Her neighbour, Insight, lives to the East. Fear, is her neighbour to the West.
Bravery’s skin is positively luminous when she speaks to Insight over the fence. Insight is the neighbour who gives the best advice. Bravery basks in her wisdom from the inside out.
When I visit, Bravery is patient with my childish assumptions about Fear. I imagine she flirts with Fear relentlessly. He’s dangerously attractive, knows what to do about everything and could help her to be taken seriously beyond her property lines. I imagine marriage between them someday as an honourable privilege since he is already a decorated war hero. I imagine him smiling seductively one night after the sun has set, whispering, ‘How ‘bout you feel the fear and do it anyway, baby?’
I am getting to know Bravery a little better all the time though. She’s a grownup. I bet she would laugh (a big, beautiful, honest laugh), if she knew what I really thought went on between her and Fear.
The truth is, Bravery doesn’t trust Fear when Insight isn’t home. She locks the doors and pulls the blinds. I’ve seen it happen.
“Fear is a useful neighbour,” she tells me gently one day. “He warns if there are intruders and other dangers but he sure knows how to suck the joy out of everything with his intimidation tactics.”
“No, the only flirting I’ve done,” she adds, “is with the idea of taking down my fences on both sides.”
What would it be like to welcome insight into your life and to use fear’s guidance instead of allowing fear to use you? Let me know what you think. Enjoy your week 🙂
Much love, Katherine
