courageously – Aspirational Adventures

‘It takes courage to make the right decision’

Title taken from ‘It takes courage to make the right decision:’ Artemis 2 astronaut explains why moon mission was delayed to 2025 (exclusive)

Renly trying to decide whether to stay on the windswept beach or run back to the car 🙂 Whatever decision will be the right one and I will love him no matter what. Photographed by myself Nov 2023

I love the above statement. In the article that follows it is about saying things aren’t ready for takeoff yet. It got me thinking with this year of elections coming up – how many of our leaders have the courage to make the right decisions and how many will promise us things they cannot deliver? How often do we promise we will do something because we do not have the courage to upset others because we are too busy people pleaseing? And also to make this positive step along the way with a project rather than coming over negatively.

It is the courage to say No that I love about this story. No it isn’t safe. No it isn’t ready. Just no not yet. Not no forever but just wait. This project will have to wait because I don’t have the energy/time/resources/support to get it done.

I think too often one is encouraged to push through and get things done rather than be courageous enough to say “wait” and “not quite yet”. The Artemis 2 people aren’t say Never but are saying Wait. Wait till it’s safe. Wait till we know more.

I think about the meeting where I bemoaned the need for some people to show they were busy, in that there was just this need to “get the job done” “get the money spent” and when someone was brave enough to challenge that, all though they appeared to be listened to, were actually ignored because no one there was courageous enough to say things like “oh you could be right let’s wait a while“.

The courage to make the right decision is so much more than pushing through regardless. It is so much more than putting in those extra hours to keep someone else happy. It is the courage to look at the whole situation and then be willing to say Wait. Sometimes it might even be the courage to scrap it completely.

I will paraphrase something I heard on a TV program last night “This life is all we have and it is alright to make mistakes along the way so long as one has the courage to admit to them, pick oneself up and go off to see what happens next”.

Not “don’t make mistakes” and not “oh that hurt so I won’t step out again” but to boldly go and courageously see what happens next.

Role Models

Picture of a path through the woods with the sunlight peeking through. Taken by Diane Woodrow — Picture from my morning walk – 14th March 2022 – taken by myself

I was reading Jon Kuhrt’s blog on Herd Immunity this morning – [and I know I use parts of his blogs often, but that is because what he writes resonates with me. I would suggest everyone sign up to follow him.] It was the part about Courage and Faith that I pondered as I was dog walking this morning, and of how to be able to live in Courage and Faith we need to have role models to help us walk it out.

The picture above is of a walk I used to do regular but then, for some reason, I got nervous climbing up the steep track to get to it. Everyone who climbs it says they get out of breath but for some reason I decided it was beyond me. Also there are loads of lovely walks around me that I could do so it wasn’t a great hardship. Then on Friday I met up with a friend for a dog walk. She lives at the bottom of this hill so suggested going up there. And we did. And I realised why I loved going so much – the trees, the light through the trees, the peace, being above the town – and so this morning my dog and I went up there. And we loved it. But we needed that supporter, that role model to encourage us back up.

But that was what got me thinking about living in courage and faith and not getting caught in herd immunity. If one has always been brought up with being fearful, of not stepping out, of not disagreeing with people, of believing what is taught or told from the media, of believing the world is dangerous, of deciding that God only answers prayers if they go a certain way, even that God isn’t quite to be trusted, to never say No because you need to be a “good girl”, to always need friends around you whether they enlighten you or drag you down. All those things encourage people to live in fear, anxiety, distrust, doubt, and feel safe agreeing with their herd, their tribe, their group.

But if one doesn’t have a role model to help your live in courage and faith one can swing in the opposite direction. So when one has been told not to disagree and wants to breakaway then one can swing to being angry and argumentative and always defending their point of view. If one wants to breakaway from being brought up not to trust God or others, and that the world is a dangerous place, one could swing so far the other way that it becomes a blase, “Pollyanna” way of life. If one has been brought up never to say No and wants to change from that, one could move into always saying No even to good things. If one been brought up not to be courageous then one can step out and take too many risks and get hurt or hurt others.

So we need to have role models to help us walk courageously along the path chosen for us. We need to have role models who model true trusting faith in a mighty creator who loves us unconditionally. To find them we need to be bold. To find them we need to test if they are what they say they are. To find them we need to not follow the herd to next big name, the next big issue, the next big thing.

We need to test the waters. We need to be bold enough to look within ourselves. We need to be healed from the need to follow the herd, to be safe with a crowd. That is not to say we need to be on our own but we need to be with people we can be ourselves in all our fallenness and that we can accept their fallibility.

We need to not be swayed by the waves of media which feed our fears but be bold enough to really listen to what God/the Universe is saying to us. Then we too can be role models to others.