Author Archives: admin

Pecos Bill

Comments
This American tall tale – or collection of tales – comes from the great tradition of brag stories from the Wild West. Decades of cowboys sitting around the campfire trying to outdo each other with exaggerated exploits gave rise to the legend of Pecos Bill. The stories were collected and put into published form in 1932 by an East Coast writer for The Century magazine. What’s fun about these stories – about all tall tales, really – is the zany bravado that takes physical courage to the extreme.

What’s that? Never heard of Pecos Bill? How he fell out of his family’s wagon while they were heading out west, and him just a little baby? Fell right into the Pecos River and nobody in the wagon was the wiser, but he got himself rescued by a bunch of coyotes and they raised him up. Once he did get grown up he ran across some human beings at last and they convinced him (it wasn’t easy) that he was a human being too, and so he decided to give cowboying a try. Beat up a rattlesnake and used it for a whip. Beat up a mountain lion and used it for a horse. Roped a whole herd of cattle and dug the Grand Canyon, and when he saw a tornado coming he roped it and rode it until it could barely whisper. That‘s who Pecos Bill was.

The benefits of humor to relieve stress and anxiety are well known. “Laughter is the best medicine,” has been true since the first human slipped on a banana peel. When taking on a challenge, especially a physical courage challenge, a handful of Pecos Bill exaggeration can well lighten the tension.  Look for the wonderful version of the Pecos Bill stories written and illustrated by Steven Kellogg or the reissued 1938 Newbery Honor Book, Pecos Bill: The Greatest Cowboy of All Time by James Cloyd Bowman.  I promise you your bucakroos will be inspired.

Plan B

Comments
I have two anecdotes to share today, and then something to say about them.
Last year, my friend B. shared a wonderful “Plan B” story about a day she spent with her daughter, who was then a young teen. I don’t remember all the details, but I think the original plan was to take the train to New York City to see a Broadway show, and then shopping or some other treat. The timing was tricky though, because of other things on their schedule,  and B. decided they should have a Plan B – what they would do if the train was late, or the show was sold out, or any other monkey wrench in the machine. Long story short and indeed, the original plan fell through entirely, but they immediately switched to Plan B – which if I’m remembering correctly involved taking another train to Philadelphia and seeing an exhibit at a museum, and there was a second Plan B for the first Plan B which had to be implemented, because it was all on the fly – well, you get the picture. They had a fabulous time, and remember it fondly to this day as an adventure that unfolded one surprise after another like a series of gifts.
The second anecdote is less sunny. Twenty years or so ago I was having lunch with a college friend, who shared with me her dreams of making a career in a highly competitive industry. After some time (and plenty of expressions of encouragement, I assure you) I asked her, “what do you think you might do if that doesn’t work out?” A chilly silence descended. My question, it seemed, was as welcome as a bucket of icy water dumped over her head. I was genuinely surprised. Why not consider alternatives? Her plan involved the participation or cooperation or support at some level from many other people at many stages along the way, and other people are not always able or willing to participate or cooperate with or support our personal plans.
Plan B does not imply lack of confidence in Plan A. But it is an acknowledgment that things don’t always work out as we hope or expect. I think you could even argue that having a Plan B makes Plan A more likely to come to fruition, just as the safety net under a trapeze swinger makes going all out for the triple flip possible. One of the things I love about children is their wide embrace of possibilities. Ask a kid what she wants to be when she grows up and you may well get an answer like, “A doctor. Or a ballerina. Or maybe a professional chef.” The more paths we see leading away from our starting position the better. The more we limit ourselves to one set of options – the only options that can lead to the end of the rainbow – the more anxiety we feel. We see threats to that narrow range of options at every turn. Disappointment and defeat lurk behind every tree.   This is similar to what I wrote about a while back when I talked about different ways of dealing with obstacles – a limited range of options can make obstacles permanent.

Among the values that intellectual courage can help us activate are flexibility and adaptability; emotional courage can help us activate readiness and optimism; physical courage can help us with patience and social courage can help us with tolerance.  How about today making a Plan A with your kids for the weekend, and then making a Plan B to stick in your back pocket? Who knows what may happen? You may even find yourself hoping that Plan A falls through!

Making Friends with Fear

Comments

Me making friends with Fear

As some of you dear readers may recall, I decided to adopt a fearless approach to life in 2012.  Trust me, co-writing a blog about nurturing courage in kids will force you to examine (in depth) the ways you may be both the brave and cowardly lion.  Since I also currently treat both children and adults with anxiety, I thought it especially important to put into practice some of the approaches I’ve been encouraging my patients to adopt.  Taylor Clark’s new book Nerve: Poise Under Pressure, Serenity Under Stress, and the Brave New Science of Fear and Cool (2011) also woke me up a little.   

Clark’s research shows that currently the U.S. is ranked “the most anxious nation on the planet, with more than 18 percent of adults suffering from a full-blown anxiety disorder;” stress-based ailments costing “an estimated $300 billion per year in medical bills and lost productivity;” and our annual usage of anti-anxiety medications doubling from “$900 million to $2.1 billion” (p. 11).  Clark also interviewed Dr. Richard Leahy, psychologist and anxiety specialist, who cautions that adults aren’t the only anxiety sufferers these days (something I, too, can attest): “The average high school kid today has the same level of anxiety as the average psychiatric patient in the early 1950s” (p. 11).  Acceptance and Commitment Therapy specialists Steven Hayes, Jason Luoma, and Robyn Walser, in their therapy manual Learning ACT (2007), caution that one of the main contributors to anxiety is experiential avoidance.  In normal speak: the more we avoid what we fear, the more anxiety develops.  So, starting with identifying the things we’re afraid of and developing a plan to face those fears step-by-step is a good place to start boosting one’s courage capacity—and decreasing our generalized anxiety at the same time. 

 

I mentioned in my New Year’s post (click here to read it) that learning to snorkel without panicking would be one of my “learn to live fearlessly” goals.  Let me back up and explain a little.  Four years ago, I joined the masses of North Americans dealing with anxiety and had my first official panic attack. 


 

I was in the Caribbean on vacation with my family.  We’d planned an excursion to what was touted as “Paradise Island” to snorkel for the day.  I would agree that initially this small island, located in the middle of a turquoise sea an hour boat ride from any civilization, did seem pretty idyllic and relaxing.  An hour into our snorkeling, however, my adventure plunged from a trip to paradise to one in hell.  

Shortly after my husband and I made our way on the outskirts of the coral reef surrounding “Paradise Island,” the wind picked up and an undertow current pulled us quickly further out into the ocean than we anticipated.  In a matter of minutes we were half-way around a U-shaped coral reef, guideless, and with no knowledge about where the break in the reef was to safely take the short cut back to shore.  I knew that swimming over a coral reef, as gentle as those coral branches appear swaying to the rhythm of the ocean undertow, was a very bad idea.  Especially since the water was very shallow covering the reef that now separated us from the island shoreline.  I’d seen those Google images of scarred bellies of stupid, clearly misinformed folks who’d chosen to do so. 

As the current picked up, water started to fill my snorkel gear.  My eyes were burning and I couldn’t see in my now-foggy mask.  I’d also swallowed enough salt water to deregulate my breathing, officially ushering in my panic.  The connection between body and mind is now firmly established.  When the body begins to panic, mind follows suit–or vice versa.  Panic felt like not being able to get a full breath, pounding heart, narrowed visual focus, and sounded like this in my head: “I’m going to die out here and my babies are on the beach ALONE!” As calmly as I could I yelled to my husband, “I’m not doing okay.  We need to get in asap.  I can’t do this!  I can’t see the kids, they’re not were we left them!  I think I’m panicking?”  Ya’ think? My husband, as I’ve mentioned in previous posts, is a very calm individual.  Some may even say unresponsive at times.  He is not prone to anxiety nor does he multitask well, especially while snorkeling. He wasn’t concerned about the kids.  He also thought it would be perfectly fine to swim across the reef whenever he felt like it.  I, on the other hand, started waving madly for help.   I was going to save us, even if he was too clueless yet to realize the kind of peril we were in!

 

We’d been reassured that if we found ourselves in trouble, the tour guides would see us waving our hands and immediately dispatch a boat to our rescue.  So much for that!  No amount of hand waving from increasingly watery depths while the ocean pushed us up against the sharp edge of the coral reef, combined with water-garbled pleas in both English and Spanish (impressive since I was panicking, remember), brought my rescuers.  Once again, my husband/handsome prince turned into my rescuer.  He screamed back at me to keep swimming.  You have to scream at a person panicking.  It’s the only way to get their attention as they are VERY distracted by fear!   I quickly realized that my husband couldn’t carry me and that I’d have to make it back on my own steam–despite my failed attempts to cling desperately to him during the worst moments of panic. After letting go of my husband’s neck, I took off my mask and snorkel (letting them hang awkwardly around my own neck), and started swimming for my life.  He just kept saying encouraging, if nonchalant, things like “You’ll be fine.  We’re almost there.”  Everyone needs a reassuring cheerleader sometimes, especially our kids–and big kids like me. 

 

It took about 15 minutes of very focused, hard swimming to get back to the shore.  I just focused on each next stroke and getting back to my kids.  Two key tips to dealing with panic: focus on the present moment (reassure yourself that in this moment you are okay and all you have to handle is this moment) and identify a life-affirming goal that is truly important to you.  A brown paper lunch bag is also a good thing to have on hand, but wouldn’t have helped me much to regulate my breathing in the middle of the ocean.  So is reminding yourself that no one has ever died from a panic attack–it just feels like you could. 

 

Cut to me clinging desperately to a nice Dominican man trying to help me ashore, me feeling extremely grateful to be alive, then me racing to hug my kids (once I finally found them ordering drinks at the snack bar, completing unaware how precariously close they had just been to becoming orphans!)  And the answer is “No,” I would never again be so naive as to leave my kids on the shoreline while I go off for a “short” snorkel!  Turns out, I’m more like those dum-dums who decide to swim over a coral reef than I’d like to admit.

I did lecture my kids later about the importance of sticking to our promise to stay where we leave them.  As a parenting coach, I’m particularly aware of those times when we can lash out at our kids because we are afraid or when we’ve made a mistake and are looking for a scapegoat.  Like the moment after our child lets go of our hand and jumps off the sidewalk curb, only to narrowly miss being hit by a car, and we pull them back into our care only to berate them for their foolishness instead of saying, “Oh, sweetie! I’m so grateful you are okay.”  I’ve learned to make a sincere effort with my kids, especially when I’m feeling fear, to hug first (while taking a deep breath) and lecture last.  In other words, connect then correct!

 

So, a few weeks ago in the midst of an East Coast winter storm, the Caribbean siren started calling my name again, beckoning me back to her ocean depths. I’m also a sucker for a great travel deal, which I happened to find last-minute.  After booking the trip, I realized that I had manifested the perfect opportunity to follow through on my promise to face my fear of snorkeling.  I initially thought I might even be able to try scuba diving on the trip (classic overachiever thinking).  That is, until I called my younger brother who happens to be a former navy diver.  He told me that only 7 of his class of 25 new recruits managed to complete his particular scuba training course.  Oh.  “Why’s that?” I asked.  He explained that people either take to scuba or don’t.  It has something to do with switching from being a nose to mouth breather, to start with.  It also has a lot to do with whether or not you actually want to do it, like the water, and/or feel comfortable in generally uncomfortable, claustrophobic, fear-inducing underwater conditions.  That gave me some pause.  I thought, well I love taking baths.  But then I remembered and confessed to my brother that since I was a little kid, I’ve always avoided learning to do the front crawl.  I even had my mom write notes to my swimming instructors explaining that I wasn’t well on the days I had front crawl instruction. I managed to never learn the crawl and have only ever swum with my head above water.  That really should have been my first clue that I may not be the most confident snorkeler, let alone a natural scuba diver.  I also don’t particularly love the underworld, well not with the kind of passion that one of my young patients has who wants desperately to be a mermaid when she grows up!  I did, however, want to develop some more physical courage. And model for my kids overcoming a fear.

 

My brother’s advice was similar to cognitive behavior therapy’s classic in vivo exposure method to combating phobias.  He told me I should start with putting my head underwater in the bathtub, for longer and longer periods of time. Then, take a swimming course to learn the front crawl.  Next, I should practice snorkeling in a swimming pool, and so on. That’s when I mentioned that I was leaving in a week.  My brother’s response: “Maybe you need to rethink your goal.  Do you really want to learn to scuba?” 

Well, embarrassing as this is to admit, I actually hadn’t asked myself that one important question.  Truth be told, I don’t really want to become a scuba diver. It was more of a pride thing after the snorkeling debacle.  A vague interest that sounded cool to try someday.  And I still might, with a lot more preparation and time than I had for this particular trip.  But I did want to get back in the water and learn to snorkel more confidently alongside my very observant children who have enjoyed teasing me over the past few years since my “Paradise Island” freak out.  I like seeing those colorful fish and glimpsing the underwater world, if only for a few brief moments.  I also wanted to practice what I coach some of my patients to do daily, which is to face the very fears that can keep us anxious, overmedicated, and feeling powerless as victims instead of the true heros/heroines in our own life stories that we can be. 

 

My views of the coral reef

Pacific Red Lion Fish

I’m happy to report that last week, despite malfunctioning equipment and needing to repeatedly tell my family to chill out and let me go at my own pace, I did get back into snorkel gear and swam atop a pristine coral reef in the Caribbean–albeit very close to our guide’s boat.  It took a few minutes for me to adjust my breathing, as my brother had explained is normal (normalizing stuff always makes me feel better).  I also needed to make sure my kids were being well taken care of by their father and a guide, so I could calmly explore on my own.  But once I gained comfort in my new underwater surroundings, I marvelled at the sea life all around me.  Schools of fish swimming right up to my mask to say “Hello!” and grab some of my offerings of food.  Stingrays gliding by, thank you very much.  And the serene coral beds waving their friendly, albeit deceptive, greetings.  The salt to water content in this particular ocean playground is so high, it was easy just to float and relax both my body and mind–a big part of offsetting panic.  In fact, I gained so much confidence facing my fear that I even decided to take on another courage challenge and held a couple of alligators that same week. 

That’s how facing our fears works, you see, with each new challenge we conquer the more we make friends with fear and gain courage! 

Me and a two-month old gator

My “much more confident, relaxed” daughter with the same gator

What fear do you want to make friends with and grow a little courage along with me in 2012?  What about your son or daughter?

Courage Challenge Report: Dealing with Dragons

Comments
It being an unusually mild February break, my daughter, the Lovely K., declared her intention to sleep outside in a tent. We set it up on Wednesday, just one step from the porch, and she and a friend piled in for the night. The following morning I found that although the friend had slept the night through in the tent, K. had come in around 11, and slept on the sofa. Her explanation was that she hadn’t taken enough blankets and warm clothes. Mild February, but still February in upstate New York.
So the next night said she would give it another go. This time, no friend, but lots of extra blankets, coats, hats, etc. She was tired and ready to climb into her nest of quilts and covers at 8:30.
Physical courage, as we have said on this blog, involves willingness to endure discomfort. It also involves willingness to withstand the threat of snakes and strangers and things that go bump in the night.  Note: it’s really a good idea if nobody puts rubber snakes in the tent. 
I got a couple of texts in the first few minutes.  Nerves.  Hearing people walk past on the street (the tent was only about ten yards from the sidewalk and street).  Wondering if there were more rubber snakes hidden under her blankets (additional note: don’t tell your friends your daughter is doing her first solo camp-out if they are sort who might sneak over and hide a rubber snake under a blanket).   And before you ask, I’ll tell you that the tent was in the front yard because at this time of year the back yard is full of frozen dog poo.  So yes, the front yard, but on a safe, quiet street.  I told her I was confident she could do it, and that after all she could be inside the house in approximately two long strides (see photo!)  I went to bed.  I don’t use the term “courage challenge” with her too often,  because as you can well imagine she has gotten an earful of “courage” and “challenges” and I’m likely to run into some counter-will if I bring it up!  But courage challenge it was, without question.

In the morning, I checked her bedroom: empty.  Checked the sofa: empty.  I picked up my cell phone to take a photo of the tent, and found this:
I think it hardly needs saying that I felt awful.  Poor kid!  Alone in the dark and the cold, it’s easy to imagine all kinds of lurking dangers. 
But here’s the bottom line: she did not bail out.  She braved the cold and the dark and the rubber snakes and the fear of “someone,” and stuck to her resolve.  Maybe she was too scared to leave the tent?  Maybe.  But still, she did stay.  I woke her up at 7:00 and bundled her into the house to get some good sleep on the sofa, by the fire.  As far as I’m concerned, she earned a medal with this courage challenge.

Amazingly,  she reported a dream to me when she woke up – a dream so perfect to the occasion that a screenwriter or novelist could not have done better.  “I was in a town, and the next town over was destroyed and deserted because there was a dragon.  And people had to get picked to go there and be sacrificed so it wouldn’t come destroy this town too.  And I got picked, and L., (one of her best friends) and we went there and there was a volcano where it lived.  There were tracks and the old mining car things, like a roller coaster, and we got in one of those cars.  We had a blue snake with us – I think it was a magical snake.  And we didn’t want to go near where the dragon was.  We saw a pit full of dead bones.  The tracks were going up and down and were broken in some places, and the car thing we were in had to jump over gaps.  Then ahead of us was this wall — like water standing up – and we had only a certain time left to get through it before it turned to stone and the dragon wouldn’t be able to get us.  Then that snake that was with us was the dragon.  But it couldn’t get through the wall.  And we were safe.”

In the words of Joseph Campbell: “The cave you fear to enter holds the treasure that you seek.”

.

The fear at the bottom of the hole

Comments

It has been argued that there is, fundamentally, only one fear: the fear of death. This hypothesis says that if you trace any fear to its deepest, darkest root, it turns out it’s the fear of nothingness, of non-being, our mortality. But I recently came across a very inspiring passage from How To Write a Sentence and How to Read One, by Stanley Fish (and yes, I read books like this!) that offered me a new insight into this fear.

“Mortality is the condition of being able to die, regarded by many as a curse, but more properly appreciated as a gift, the gift of design and choice, of gain and loss, of hope and desperation, of failure and redemption, all modes of being that are available only to creatures who, like sentences (and novels), have a beginning, a middle, and an end. It is the inevitability and shadow of death that provides life with a narrative arc, and provides moments in that narrative with a meaning; for the meaning of a moment – the distinctiveness – is a function of the place prepared for it by a past and the place waiting for it in a future…Without the specter and period of death, there would be no urgency of accomplishment, no expectations to be realized or disappointed, no anxieties to be allayed. Each moment would bear an equal weight or equal weightlessness.” (p 154)

Part of what we seek to do on Lion’s Whiskers is offer you suggestions for reframing fear and courage. What if, rather than bemoaning and cursing your fears, you looked at them as a gift? What if every fear is an opportunity to create meaning out of your experience?

Ask yourself: without fear, can you have courage?

.

Parkour? Or Peace Like a River?

Comments
The subtitle for our blog talks about “challenges on the path ahead.” I want to establish some working definitions for the purpose of today’s post. Let’s stay that “the path ahead” means whatever goals you have for your life, for your children, for your family. Let’s then agree that “challenges” are whatever obstacles or barriers lie across that path as you move toward your goal. They might be physical challenges, financial obstacles, emotional barriers – roadblocks come in all shapes and sizes. Please hold these definitions while I digress a bit.
Just recently I read somewhere (and I’m afraid I can’t give credit where credit is due, because I read a lot of parenting content on-line and I don’t remember where ran across this) that being a good parent means making a choice between what is easy and what is right. I puzzled over this for a while and at last concluded that it sets up a false dichotomy. It implies that what is right is not easy, and because most of us prefer easy to hard, it further implies that we would rather not do the right thing – because we’re lazy or scared or busy or tired or impatient or weak. But what if choosing what is right is also the easy choice?
I’m going to assume you know what is right – for yourself, for your children, for your family – and that your “right” may not look exactly like my “right.”  But let’s get back to the challenges and the path ahead. There will always be obstacles on this path toward what is right for you and your kids. So what happens when the road is blocked?
It seems to me there are three ways to react to an obstacle. You can believe the false dichotomy (that doing what is right will be hard) and let it block you, either temporarily or permanently. A second option is what I think of as the “Parkour Method” after the cross-country racing sport: charging headlong at the obstacle in a straight line. Lots of people choose this method, and are energized by the challenge: the narrowness of their escape from failure is their measure of success. A third method is what I think of as “Peace Like a River,” after the song of that name. In a river there can be all manner of obstacles, be they boulders or tree trunks or (depending on where this river is) derelict cars or bridge pilings or herds of cattle. The water doesn’t find these obstacles a challenge. It simply flows around them, continuing on its path. Easy.
Yes, I said “Easy.” Not the same as instant, however, and not the same as effortless.  Easy as in, “Rest easy, you did the right thing.”  I think that using the Six Types of Courage can help me stay focused on my destination, keep me on my path, and help me figure out how to go over or around.  I’m still holding my daughter’s hand on this journey, but it won’t be much longer until she’s walking entirely under her own power. And I think that when she encounters a false dichotomy in her way, she’ll see it for what it is and just keep moving forward.  I hope it will always be easy for her to do the right thing.
.

5-Minute Courage Workout: Pull Up a Chair and Make Yourself Uncomfortable!

Comments
Compiled and written by Lisa and Jennifer:

Part of developing physical courage is to gain, through experience, a comfort with discomfort.  It is impossible to know one’s physical limits and/or capacity without testing them.  It is through conquering our fears of high places, being cold,  underwater, fatigued, thirsty, or whatever particular physical discomfort we may have, that we have the opportunity to boost our physical courage capacity.  It is through confronting physical discomfort and pushing through pain, that we can learn (and teach our children) that we have the capacity to survive situations that may someday truly test our limits.  Our assumed limitations often have as much to do with the story we tell ourselves about our physical discomfort as any actual physical limitation.  Pushing ourselves just that little bit past our usual comfort zone can often reveal surprising strength.

Here’s a list of 5-Minute Courage Workouts by age range to help you and your child to develop some comfort with physical discomfort:

                          Grab Some Lion’s Whiskers Today!
  • Toddler:  the next time you are hanging out together on the jungle gym, taking a walk, or tumbling in gymnastic class, see if you can create an opportunity to push yourselves just a little bit harder, just a little bit longer.  When your child says “I can’t.  I want to be carried,” see if you can coach him/her to build some endurance with the play.  Promise, “Let’s just play for 5 minutes more, and then we will take a break.  I know you can do it!”
  • Preschooler:  the next time you are headed out on a wintery walk, let your child choose if he/she will wear a coat.  Pack the coat along with you, just in case.  After 5 minutes or so on the walk, ask your child “Do you feel cold enough to need your coat?”  Let them have the experience of needing to wear the coat, instead of just assuming or wanting that for them.   
  • Early elementary student: ever been drenched in a rainstorm or fallen overboard?  Uncomfortable isn’t it, to be walking or swimming around in water-soaked jeans.  How about simulating such an experience for your child by encouraging them to take a bath tonight fully clothed?  See if they can stay in the tub or shower for 5 minutes in their soaking wet, heavy clothing! 
  • Upper elementary student or ‘tween:  have a sit-up challenge with your child tonight.  Before heading to bed, ask your child if they would like to see how many sit-ups you both can do in 5 minutes.  You can do them as slowly or quickly as you want.  Teach them how to do a sit-up, if they don’t know how, or google how to do one effectively if it has been awhile.  The goal is to experience the pretty much immediate discomfort and encourage one another to push through that feeling until the timer goes off.    
  • High schooler or teen:  The next time your teen goes to raid the fridge, ask “Are you hungry?  How do you know you’re hungry?”  Have a 5-minute discussion with your child about the difference between craving and hunger.  Sometimes we crave sugar and simple carbohydrates, when our bodies really need a muscle and brain building protein-enriched meal.  Sometimes we are hungry for time, attention, rest, or human connection, more than we are for food.   Sometimes out of emotional discomfort, we hope food will fill the void.  True hunger is different.  A discussion like this can also help us develop compassion for what it might be like to be truly hungry due to poverty or famine and to develop gratitude for the food that we do have in our fridge.  Pausing before eating can also help develop tolerance for being “just a little bit hungry” and still being okay when we can’t immediately satisfy every craving. 
What is one of the physical courage challenges you or your child has faced recently?  Have you quit smoking, run a half-marathon, learned to juggle, moved on from the bunny hill,  joined a new gym, or completed chemo? 

We love to hear your stories! 

Here are some other 5-Minute Courage Workouts to tackle physical courage:  


Playing With Fire, Navigating the Neighborhood, Talking Dirty, It’s a Dog Eat Dog World.

On Stories, Narrative and Storytelling

Comments

This again is from Bruce Jackson’s wonderful The Story is True: The Art and Meaning of Telling Stories, and speaks to our human urge to reframe our experiences into coherent narratives so that we can understand what happens to us and around us:

“When we can’t figure out the plot in real life, people say, ‘It’s senseless, just senseless.’ And that may be true; it may be senseless. Sense is a product of our intelligence, not a condition of the world. But few of us are satisfied with ‘it’s senseless’ as an explanation. We want bottom lines. We want villains and conspiracies and plots like those in movies and novels; we want to live in a causal universe, a universe in which things make sense.”

Courage Question of the Day

Comments
Here at Lion’s Whiskers we are hoping to collect examples of physical courage.  To recap, here’s how we define physical courage:

Physical courage is the one type, from the Six Types of Courage, that most people think of first.  It is the type of courage that allows us to risk discomfort, injury, pain or even death—running into burning buildings as a firefighter, facing an enemy on the battlefield, undergoing chemotherapy, climbing a mountain, protecting a child from a dangerous animal.  We are right to be wary of pain: pain tells us where our boundaries and limits are.  However, sometimes there are things more important than pain, and our physical fear becomes a border to be crossed.  Physical fear is often blown entirely out of proportion: pain is often greater in anticipation than in fact, and that dread can become an insurmountable barrier.  Physical courage also involves recognizing that your body is how you participate in the world; keeping it healthy, strong, and resilient prepares you for all kinds of challenges, not just physical ones. 

Do you think it takes more physical courage to climb a mountain or battle an illness? Do you think it takes more courage to learn to sleep in the dark, take your first steps, or try diving off a diving board for the first time?  Do you notice a difference between your son and your daughter, in terms of how they define physical courage and what it looks like in their lives?

Can you remember a time that you or your child had to have physical courage?  Please post your thoughts or stories here. 

We would very much appreciate hearing from you! 

.

About Stories

Comments

From a wonderful book called The Story is True: The Art and Meaning of Telling Stories, by Bruce Jackson. It says so elegantly what we’ve said before in Sharing Family Stories and other posts.

“In time, how we tell our story depends not so much on what happened then, but on what we know of the world now. And that is why the story of that time told at this moment means at least as much, and perhaps more, about this world now than that time then. And that is why these stories we tell again and again remain forever new.”