…cynicism is often a mask for fear. It does not necessarily make us any wiser. It only means we have become afraid.
I’ve learned that instead it takes much more courage to hope. To take a leap, even when you are standing on the edge of a cliff, knowing there is the swirling mad abyss below.
It takes more courage to stare the darkness in its face and say, “Though I know not where I land or whether I fall, I must try.”
There was a time in my life when I was afraid, oh so afraid. Waking up at night with cold sweats, hands quaking, cannot see straight afraid. My heart had been shattered and the fragile pieces were thrown into the fire. Repeatedly. Phantoms in my head. Danger around every corner. But I dared hope, even when the naysayers feared for me. It wasn’t just hope that got me through, though. It was damn dogged work. Changing how I deal with problems. Smashing boundaries to bits and setting up new foundations. It was determination that above all else, it could work. Even when it didn’t before. And I was lucky. It could easily at any moment have gone another way, were it not for a refusal to let a precious gift die. And that gift, gives every day, and every day, and more and more, in impossible ways. But what really got me through, beyond work, when logic and reason failed, was every morning waking up and making a choice. And choosing one day more to make that leap of faith.
Some days, it took so much courage to leap.
What lessons have resonated with you in life? What have you learned or discovered?
The Rules
I think there is real power in the human voice, as flawed as it may be. And when the voices speak together, when you have a multitude of voices speaking, patterns begin to emerge and there you can begin to understand truth. So in the spirit of the personal narrative, I am hosting a weekly challenge every Tuesday morning, where I will post a topic (ranging from the banal to the intimate) and ask readers to respond. I would love to see everyone’s answers and how similar and different they all are.
You can respond in any way you choose. You can give a fictional response or a true one. You can use words, sentences, and/or photographs. If you have a blog, you can link it with Mr. Linky below. Please be sure to include “Tell It To Me Tuesdays” in the title, and link back to this post. Feel free to use the “Tell It To Me Tuesday” button available to the right. If you don’t have a blog, but want to join in, you can just leave a comment. Please follow the rules. I don’t want to have to delete links. I like links! Don’t make me delete them.
Next week’s challenge: Friendship
If you like what you see add me to your reader!
I don’t remember being particularly sensitive to smells when I was younger. But somehow – overnight it seems – my sense of smell became a sense I couldn’t do without. I’ve learned to use it when I cook, instead of taste tests, to see if a dish is just right. I know when cookies are done baking when I can smell the cinnamon and sugar emanating from the oven. I love the smell of rain in the air, but I hate the smell of raw meat and gasoline. I bathe in lavender and lather in coconut. I bury my nose in my husband’s pillow when he is gone on a business trip and I am missing him. 
But there is one smell in particular that I love, that always makes me feel like I just caught the scent of a wonderful secret: the smell of night-blooming jasmine. When I was growing up, there was a jasmine bush just outside my bedroom window. And on summer nights, when my window was open, its perfume would waft in and hover over my bed where I usually lay with a book and a flashlight, reading when I should have been asleep. For me, jasmine was the scent of stolen moments, escape and escapades into the inky black recesses of summer nights. Now, whenever I smell it, I smell night-time in summer.
What scents evoke memories in you?
One of the effects of becoming a blogger and of reading books from a deliberate perspective is that I am beginning to really believe in the power of the personal narrative. As humans we once carried knowledge, traditions, sense of family and honor through oral history. We told each other stories, and I think stories have the ability to convey really deep truths. Of course, we like hard data: facts, figures, statistics…and they help us understand reality and get a handle on complexity. At least in a certain way. But that is only one way to get at truth. I think there is real power in the human voice, as flawed as it may be. And when the voices speak together, when you have a multitude of voices speaking, patterns begin to emerge and there you can begin to understand truth.
