Recently, a friend had purchased several of my Courage The Heart and Spirit of Every Woman/Reclaiming the Forgotten Virtue books as gifts. She asked if we could have lunch so I could write a personal message and autograph each of them.
About a month later, I received an e-mail from one of the women who had received the books. I was struck by the powerful insight of the story she shared.
I often tell the story of my self-exploration visits each Sept. to the Grand Tetons. About five years ago, I had on my agenda to explore what I call, a set of “unlimited questions.” I started with what would I do differently if I had unlimited time, unlimited money, unlimited market share, so forth. Answers after a week were less than satisfying, since in many ways, I kept discovering that in most ways that mattered, I had achieved close to unlimited time, unlimited money, unlimited market share, etc. In other words, these were not the things that represented barriers. These were the “wrong questions.” Somewhere near the last day of my week, on a walk around Jenny Lake, I found a better question for me. What if I had “unlimited courage?” How would my life, my work, my relationships, my satisfaction, and my inner peace, change? This turned out to be the “right question.”
Three months later I was diagnosed with breast cancer, and I wondered if there was some cosmic feature preparing me to handle this situation better.
Best of luck to you Linda.”
Linda and I stay in touch. Currently, she is using her courage to overcome the battle with breast cancer. She recently shared with me that she changed her focus from the longer term to the shorter horizon. She now watches her stamina and her body. This is not an amazing story of courage, but it is profound nonetheless.
I love what OSHO, a great mystic from India said:
- You cannot be truthful if you are not courageous.
- You cannot be loving if you are not courageous.
- You cannot be trusting if you are not courageous.
- You cannot enter into reality if you are not courageous.
- Courage comes first… and everything else follows.
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