Courage
“You
can measure your worth by your dedication to your path, not by your successes
or failures.”
Elizabeth
Gilbert (Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear)
Elizabeth
Gilbert goes to great lengths in Big Magic to point out that living
creatively does not mean living without fear. In fact, fear is involved in
every creative endeavor. For her, fear is a co-worker, a colleague. Most actors
and other performers, even seasoned ones, experience stage fright as a normal part of the job.
Somehow, it gives them an edge, a little surge of energy. Fear is a normal part
of every human life. As Gilbert says, the only people who do not feel fear are
sociopaths—and that’s because they don’t feel anything.
The
point is not to eradicate fear, but to act in spite of it. I’ve been watching
the Canadian television series, Hartland, about a ranch family in Alberta. One
of the daughters, Amy, is a horse whisperer of sorts—she trains or retrains
horses that are in trouble for one reason or another. She is offered opportunities
to perform in many international equestrian arenas but turns them down. She
realizes, after a lot of soul searching and mistake making, that her calling is
to help troubled horses, and she has the courage to follow that calling even
though she would make far more money in performance. It reminds me of the Bible
verse that says you can't serve two masters; Matthew 6:24, which says, “…You cannot serve
God and mammon.” You must decide which will be your master.
Dedication
to one’s path sometimes requires sacrifice. In the eyes of the world, and
sometimes in the eyes of our own families, it may seem like nonsense. Only you
can choose which course to follow and only you can conquer the fear that making
such a decision involves. Courage does not mean lack of fear, it simply means
doing what you’re called to do in spite of it.
In
the Spirit,
Jane
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