Courage to be
Yesterday, the wonderful Maria Popover drew on a piece from her Brain Pickings archive on the poet and philosopher David Whyte.
In picking up a core message of his book Consolations, she quoted the following comment on courage, which seemed particularly relevant to our ongoing thinking:
Courage is the measure of our heartfelt participation with life, with another, with a community, a work; a future. To be courageous is not necessarily to go anywhere or do anything except to make conscious those things we already feel deeply and then to live through the unending vulnerabilities of those consequences. To be courageous is to seat our feelings deeply in the body and in the world: to live up to and into the necessities of relationships that often already exist, with things we find we already care deeply about: with a person, a future, a possibility in society, or with an unknown that begs us on and always has begged us on.
David Whyte, Consolations
Breathe in the wisdom. And exhale hope.
A new edition of David Whyte’s book has just been published by Canongate, with Maria Popover penning the Introduction. Consolations: The Solace, Nourishment and Underlying Meaning of Everyday Words would be a worthy addition to anyone’s Christmas list. Just saying…
From Quiet Disruptors, part of The Waterside