Passion & Courage

To art and music, to chemistry and electricity, to beauty and laughter, to passion and to courage. Why courage? Because life loves us so much, it’s always presenting us with wonderful presents: love affairs and interesting work; clove cigarettes andsunlight through clouds; whispering aspens and thescent of rain. It gives us all these terrific things, but by far it’s greatest gifts are the things it teaches us. I think those lessons are kisses from life, and I really believe that the best ones are reserved for the courageous. It has lessons for the timid and the fearful but the really good ones, it reserves for the brave. Courage is the price that life exacts for granting peace. The soul that knows it not knows no release From little things; Knows not the livid loneliness of fear, Nor mountain heights where bitter joy can hear the sound of wings. (Amelia Earhart) Every important journey is scary, and the big ones, you usually take alone, but if you got faith, you gonna find your bags packed with enough courage to get you where you need to go. (Anne O. Faulk) (Or maybe you won’t go alone…) Passion lies at the bottom of all of us, down the slippery anchor chain to the base of who we are, the real, the shameful, the furious. It’s born in the screaming, moaning, frenzied core of us. Most people learn early that it’s a dangerous thing, best kept in check. By the end of adolescence, certainly by the end of early adulthood, they’ve successfully eradicated passion… unless you hold out! HOLD OUT!