Courage: What It Means and How to Embody It
…and why it’s not about overcoming all your fears
I love the word courage. I always have. There’s something stately and majestic about it, something at once powerful and empowering.
It’s a word that holds tremendous weight, predicating challenges and obstacles to come. And yet, it also holds a promise of liberation and hope.
“Man cannot discover new oceans unless he has the courage to lose sight of the shore.” — Andre Gide
Growth and change always require a down payment of strength, courage, and openness.
Openness to new experiences, the strength to let go of the old and familiar, and the courage to choose to follow your heart even when you cannot guarantee the outcome.
As someone who has been wistfully dreaming about a future that is markedly different from the reality I am currently experiencing, I cannot help but be drawn to the word “courage.” Not just because I am craving change but because with courage usually come adventure and transformation, two things that have felt largely absent from my life in the past year.
As I considered what it would look like to embody courage in my day-to-day life, I found myself asking, what does courage actually mean to me?
