Courage through emptiness
Courage is like love, it must have hope for nourishment.
Napoleon Bonaparte
I do not crave security. I wish to hazard my soul to opportunity.
Peter O’Toole
When a bad thing happens, it takes courage to face it.
When a good thing happens, it takes courage to sieze and live it.
But … what about when nothing much at all happens?
The first two are easy. Challenge me and I’ll rise to meet it. Tempt me and I’ll be adventurous and brave.
I realised last night that the hardest thing of all is to live through times of nothing much.
Give me something to fight for, some way to find, some idea to express and I will be your champion… but when faced with the in-between stillness … where is my fortitude then?
Late, sleepless hours in an empty house peering at the starless, city sky… it’s so awfully quiet.
A few crappy days in a row without arms of comfort at the end of them leaves an inner, restless disquiet unattended.
I’m good at appreciating an extraordinary life. This whole blog is about appreciating life!
… but sometimes, just sometimes, I am struck by the sheer ordinariness of things.
I realised, last night, that patience through nothing takes the most courage of all.
Muchness 
“I realised, last night, that patience through nothing takes the most courage of all.”
Very true.
Many people fall in “love” with the wrong person and end up going down the road of disaster because they aren’t capable of living with themselves first.
If you can’t tolerate life or who you are without someone else being there to complement that, then there are bigger things at play.
I’d be saying that Samson would be a far better companion at times than just about everyone else – but you also know me to be a bit reclusive as well
Courage is to stare into the face of the cosmos, aware of the insignificance of our fleeting moment of existential awareness, and to hold its gaze.
Devoid of things we use to comfort or distract ourselves, we’re left facing the stark reality of life as it exists behind the curtain: a brief flicker of awareness; the universe conceiving life of itself, made manifest in our collective existence but only ever really there within the perception of us as individuals. Each of us is all that exists, in all its fullness.
Long distant from our prevailing Western narrative, indoctrinating us with the notion that things outside of ourselves are necessary to establish identity and to derive happiness, exists the most beautiful things of all – a wonder; an awe; a reverence to the great mystery of our ephemeral, conscious, candle in the wind. A candle that flickers until snuffed by that which made us, taking us home to herself.
So where some see ‘ordinary’, or ‘boring’, or ‘meh’… I try and choose to see an opportunity to value this fleeting moment in which we, the universe, are given the chance to consider the magnificence of our own creation. To do so not only requires a rejection of the propaganda which brings about such widespread dissatisfaction, but also courage to look up at that cosmic face, and not look away.
That usually lasts about 35-40 minutes, then I browse Netflix.