Thanks Vaughn for taking this picture! This is me at the start of my journey holding the book: Courage: The Art of Living Dangerously. By Osho. Thanks Amie for the lend!
When I began my journey I did so with a book entitled “Courage” in my pocket. People have called me courageous on my journey. Just yesterday it happened again in fact. Yet, despite having read the book cover to cover and having made it all the way here, it is the least of my virtues.
Comfortable places have been so difficult to leave! When the daunting unknown lies ahead I have clung to the comfortable known. Often it hasn’t been I who really decided to leave but the winds of change kicking me in the ass! It has taken me months longer than it should have to get here to Berlin. Indeed I have hesitantly dotted on the outskirts of the city gathering the courage to head in.
Many friends reading this will smile knowlingly as the read this and remember the extra day of two or three it took me to leave. Its rather embarrassing actually. I am so glad no one has seen any of my countless moments of anxiety as I hesitated on turning down some unknown road.
Yet, in facing and struggling against my own cowardliness I have come to discover something particular.
It doesn’t really matter.
So its taken me a long time to get here. Yet, there is a fundamental synchronicity that has underlied the timing of my journey’s twists and turns and junctures and connections and “delays”. Often seconds would have deterred me from an astounding meeting or connection. Despite being plagued with feelings of lateness and an urge to rush choices, my stops and goes have had a chronological life all of their own. I must be honest with myself. Even if I had really wanted to, I could not really have left earlier or sped things up. So doing would have forgoed the poetic conclusions of my stays.
And really, what does it matter than I have arrived in April and not in January? The months in between have been so JAM PACKED with fantastically beautiful experiences. I’d be a fool to regret any of them. I would be a fool to exchange them for a more rushed and hectic pace. An absolute fool.
That said, here I am. I am in the perfect time and place. This moment itself is a fabulously intricate creation of so many encounters and connections. How could it be any different? I cannot make a bad decision or choice!
With this in mind, with my arsenal of great moments behind me, courage becomes so much easier.
