Courage To Live

What does courage mean to you? Do you think of the firefighters who lost their lives in the World Trade Center towers? Do you think of the men and women serving in Afghanistan and Iraq?

What about the courage to admit a mistake? Or the courage to stop someone from hurting you? Or the courage to stand up for what you believe? Or the courage to just be yourself?

Yes, all those things take courage, but all of those things also have something else in common. Do you think any one of those things can be accomplished without feeling some fear? No. There cannot be courage without fear.

Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the judgment or decision that something else is more important than the fear. Courage is what you do IN SPITE of the fear, in spite of the resistance, in spite of what you want right now.

But you don't have to show the kind of courage that it takes to get on the 6:00 news. You can show courage every day. It takes courage to go against "that's just the way it is."; or "what can I do about it?", or "I've always been this way"; or "They won't let me...".

Courage is deciding not to put your current desires above your desires for the future. Courage is deciding there's something more important.

It's time to find the courage to take your future into your own hands.