Displaying items by tag: courage

The poet Andrea Gibson said, Even when the truth isn’t hopeful, the telling of it is.

And so I will.

The truth is, I personally don’t see a lot of hope in this world these days. Not only is the ongoing climate crisis filling me with dread each time the news comes on with words like “unprecedented” to describe any of the abnormal weather conditions in different parts of the world, and then proceeding to give examples of those “unprecedented” climate catastrophes (think hurricanes, the wild fires in California, and the drought in the mid-west), but I also am witnessing first-hand the complete and total dismantling of my country’s basic democratic ideals – the ideals that our country was founded on. It seems as though the basic values I was taught as a child - don’t steal, don’t cheat, don’t lie, don’t hurt others - are justifiable now because of the extremist ideas and wealth the current leadership touts.

“Transitions are almost always signs of growth, but they can bring feelings of loss. To get somewhere new, we may have to leave somewhere else behind.” ~Fred Rogers 

For the past two years, I have traveled to a number of places on my own. I made these trips because after my divorce, reality hit: nothing is guaranteed in this life and I wanted to make sure I enjoyed as many places as possible. I was still a living, breathing, functioning human being. Losing someone that meant so much to me was not in my plan, but traveling was, and always will be. I set about making lists of all the travel destinations I wanted to pursue, along with times and dates for these journeys. Then I started planning and preparing. 

Rejection happens to everyone. It can come in the form of being overlooked for a promotion or being turned down by a potential date. Rejection happens to me quite frequently. This type of rejection is not work related, relationship related, or health related. It’s the rejection that comes from literary magazines where I send a piece of myself, of my writing, to potentially be shared with a bigger audience. No one else, except for me, or a few close people I choose to share it with, know about it.

There is a story in the Buddhist tradition about a clay statue of the Buddha in a monastery in Thailand. Over the years, it was protected in the monastery from outside invaders. One day while it was being relocated, one of the monks spotted a crack in the clay. When the monk looked closer, he noticed that underneath the clay there was solid gold. The clay statue had been made of gold the whole time!