8 ▫️ if you want to sing out, sing out

In the novel A Room With a View, a group of English gentlemen and gentlewomen visit the Italian countryside. One member of the group, a young man named George, takes a solitary (and very un-Victorian) climb into a tree, and begins to shout: “Beauty! Love! Joy!” His father explains to his confused companions: “He’s proclaiming his creed.” 

In the movie Moulin Rouge!, Toulouse-Lautrec expresses his desire to uphold the Bohemian ideals of truth, beauty, freedom, and love. He and his generation, too, have a creed. 

We all have a creed of some sort. Many people don’t profess any certain religion, and some eschew religion of any kind, but a creed isn’t limited to religious belief. According to one dictionary, a creed can also be “any system or codification of belief or of opinion”. Everyone has an opinion; my opinion is that everyone believes in something. 

Some of us also have a desire to be heard, to have our creed at least acknowledged by someone else. We may not climb up into a tree and shout it for all to hear, like young George (which is probably for the best, since he ends up falling out of the tree). But to have someone hear and acknowledge us can lead to someone understanding and accepting us. It’s the potential to form a bond instead of merely a connection. 

So how can we be heard?

It takes courage to find our voice and make ourselves heard. I’ve actually been thinking a lot about courage lately, and trying to find some way to write about it. At first, I thought I would take an informal poll, and just ask: what does the word ‘courage’ mean to you? 

I can’t put it any better than the response from my brother. He put the question to his household (wife and two boys, ages 9 and 11), and sent me this:

“Ok, here’s the consensus-

Courage means:

• Making tough decisions
• Putting others before yourself
• Going through dark woods
• Fighting werewolves
• Fighting a 10 foot bear
• Fighting a 100 foot octopus”

What’s the writer’s equivalent of dropping the mic and walking off stage?

So then I thought: what does courage mean to me?

I think courage means a lot of things, and that it takes different forms depending on the situation. (See above—making a tough decision requires a different kind of courage than, say, fighting a 100-pound octopus.) I will defer to Mark Twain here:

“Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear, not absence of fear.”

Again, what more can be said...

So, in just a moment, I will move aside and let you, the reader, take the wheel. You can talk about courage, or you can pull a George and proclaim your creed. What are the qualities that are important to you? What governs the direction of your personal journey?

I will start by sharing something I am currently striving to live by:

Courage in the face of challenge;

Peace in the face of fear;

Love in the face of everything. 

I’ve been doing a lot of writing about myself on this this blog. This has been my platform. I realize that it’s not a big platform, but I’m not a big person. It’s not about me. It’s about sharing what I’m learning, and learning from what others are sharing. 

Now it’s your turn. Leave a comment below and let your voice be heard. Share who you are by sharing what you hold dear. Find common ground in common values, and/or stand out with a unique perspective. 

I can’t wait to hear what you have to say!