Courage

This week i have my first 'redundancy consultation' meeting. I know that no amount of talking will keep me in their employment, too much has happened.

Over the last few months all my beliefs and thoughts (of who I am and what I want to be) have been challenged. It has been and continues to be a difficult time as i face up to truths i had once been able to ignore. My landscape has been wiped clean, everything familiar is about to change. It is up to me to create a new landscape that will nourish and protect me.

I have read several blogs recently where other people have mentioned personal difficulties they are facing and it got me thinking about courage. Courage is the only thing that can really set us free i think.

This is an extract of a poem called 'I Mark Your Courage' by Ivan Donn Carswell. I think it captures so much.....

I Mark Your Courage 

I had no profound feelings of shock or surprise
to those matter-of-fact revelations
which spelled the end of this chapter of your life.
It was, as you put it, too late for recriminations,
and the horrendous realities could be no worse
for having faced them.

I mark your courage in that moment of admission,
when your soul cried out in sympathetic pain,
worn thin by abrasions of self-imprisonment
and total subjugation to providence.
You did not disguise your frailty
as lesser men are apt by schemes
which shorten their horizons, elaborate their dreams.

Extract of Poem by Ivan Donn Carswell