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Man, you bloggers get me thinking sometimes and it just stays in my head until I process it. I read something this morning about courage. The quote was this:

It takes courage to allow yourself to be lucky.  I’m totally serious.  Recently I had a couple of conversations with a friend about people that seem poised on the edge of greatness, only to consciously or  sub-consciously sabotage themselves.  Why the hell do we do that?

Food for thought for sure. I’ve chewed on that first sentence awhile and I must say, it’s a doozy.

Courage.

I have seen  sporting announcers use the word courage, which always makes me very uncomfortable. I hear politicians use the word as well on a plethora of things from putting policy into the public eye to the very real sacrifices made by young men and women in Iraq.

So, I looked the word up. The ability to do something that frightens you and strength in the face of pain was what I found in a quick search. I found a quote I liked by Tom Krause:

“Courage is the discovery that you may not win, and trying when you know you can lose.” 

Yeah, that about sums it up for me.

When people meet me, you will find that I have a pretty easy smile, rather comfortable in my own skin although I look like an aging roller derby girl on crack in recent photographs seen on the innertubes but there are things that people cannot know about me after a couple of hours. In my non-virtual world, there are people that have known me for years that can’t figure me out. I have never jumped out of an airplane, I’ve never wrestled a gator and I’ve never run a marathon.

But, courage, my friends is deceptive. Even folks like me can open up a can of courage in just the day-to-day tasks we take on. Courage, is indeed, a funny mistress.

Taking risks, putting yourself out there, that isn’t easy. I’m in a place in my life that I’m taking huge risks in my personal and professional relationships that people don’t even know about. I’m doing it, it is sometimes scary but I’m in. Is it courage? Maybe, maybe not but the quote from Kraus applies to me at least.

With that said, I sent the prologue of one of my books to someone to peruse it, to criticize it if necessary. I did this reluctantly because I was afraid that I would be found out and called sad, bitter names and that they wouldn’t like it, but I needed someone to look at it and tell me it was crap or if it was good. I’m also coordinating a huge project for work that will most likely leave me scratching my head but I know what I’m doing. It will either do well or crash and burn or I will be the sacrificial goat on that one although I’m comfortable that it’s pretty good.

But, what sparked these deep thoughts swirling in my head is that Mack is right to a large degree. When the shadows loom behind us it is  should be proof to us we are in the sun as we are we are standing in the light (hence there would be no shadow),  and sometimes we cut and run because it’s frightening. I find many people including myself look for the place where the shadows will just go away. They are scary.

We forget about the light.

So, today, I’m going to let the light gently burn my face and see what happens. I do that to a degree anyway, but today I will aggressively participate in my own life. I like journeys. Just a new way to think about things.

And that is what is on my mind this fine Monday morning.