Courage

For Thursday's Tales

"Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma - which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of other's opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary." - Steve Jobs.

And there it is - "...have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become." And yet oftentimes we lack that courage, don't we? Why? Because of dogma, because of other people's expectations, because simply many times we ourselves lack the belief. And why is that? Because somewhere along life's journey we knew or met someone who didn't have that courage, didn't trust his or her own voice, didn't believe and so didn't want to see us shine in the essence of our own and thus then said a word or two - a very damaging word or two - that planted the seed of doubt, of non-belief in ourselves. Because the truth is everyone wants to belong and seeks commonality in others and for the non-believers, their greatest fear is having to face the truth that they have been cowardly in their journeys and have settled for a middle-of-the-road existence that is conservative and safe, but also oftentimes unsatisfying. And to face this, to acknowledge that they have not heeded their own intuitions and have not listened to their own inner voices - the truths of which their own hearts sing - is a very uncomfortable and somewhat depressing place to visit. And so they want you to also drown your individual voice and join them in their path because not to sound trite, misery does love company.

And so the sad truth is many of us eventually begin to agree with others' beliefs and consequently begin to live a life not our own. We disregard our intuition and stop listening to our own inner voice and instead begin to listen to theirs; we stop listening to the voice of our truths that bellows in the silence but cannot be heard because that silence is deafened by the clamor of fears and doubts of the non-believers.

And yet time keeps on ticking and we keep on believing in the fallacy of our lives until that day where we hopefully have that epiphany, that discovery, that we are not them, that we are our own individual being that beats with a different heart - a heart that beats solely within us and has been telling us all along what it is we should be, what we should aspire and not be afraid to be, and to simply trust and believe.

I pretty much stay true to myself but do confess there is one area where I have unequivocal fear. And this year will be the year that I let go of that fear and begin listening to my own inner voice. The voice that is there to guide me but that I have shut out because of the seeds planted along the way; seeds that grew into brambly bushes along my path in life and that are prickly sharpened with self-doubt cultivated solely by me because I chose to believe; believe in something/someone other than me. But there comes a time when one has to finally face their fears and hand the reins over to courage instead. And so it will be.

Love and light,
Rebecca