When facing illness or end of life, courage is one of the greatest attributes we can have.  The word courage comes from the Latin word cor and the French word coeur, both meaning heart.  The Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines it as ‘mental or moral strength to venture, persevere, and withstand danger, fear, or difficulty.’  Courage is not the absence of fear, but carrying on despite fear or in the face of fear.  We show courage by taking heart whatever the circumstances.

American Buddhist Nun, Pema Chodron, has written many books about how to live with courage, compassion and wisdom.   Her books are for everyone, not just for Buddhists.  In The Pocket Pema Chodron, a selection of her writings, I found the following quote on courage.

Developing True Courage

As long as we’re caught up in always looking for certainty and happiness, rather than honouring the taste and smell and quality of exactly what is happening, as long as we’re always running away from discomfort, we’re going to be caught in a cycle of unhappiness and disappointment, and we will feel weaker and weaker.

Instead of asking ourselves, “How can I find security and happiness?” we could ask ourselves, ‘Can I touch the centre of my pain? Can I sit with suffering, both yours and mine, without trying to make it go away? Can I stay present to the ache of loss or disgrace–disappointment in all its many forms–and let it open me?  This is the trick.

What do you think of Pema Chodron’s take on courage? Leave a comment and let us know.

Do you have a list of things to do before you die?  If so, they probably consist of places you want to go, or experiences you would like to have.  But more important are the things you would like to let go of, or change about yourself.  Things that you don’t want to hold on to until you die.

When I first heard the concept of ‘one thing thing I don’t want to die with, ‘ I came up with quite a long list. This included untidiness, a tendency to be late, procrastination…, but while all of them are detracting from my enjoyment of life and preventing me from being as productive as I would like, they did not quite meet the mark of being an important thing I really do not want to die still doing.

After much thought I came up with isolating myself as the major thing to change.  I am not anti-social, but when the going gets tough I am apt to stop socializing and hunker down in my fox-hole and try to work things out on my own.  It is not an effective way of getting through difficult times, or of getting things done.  But, more importantly, it is not good for health.

There is research that shows that  that social support has a favourable influence on a wide range of illnesses including heart disease, cancer, hypertension and respiratory disorders.

Lonely people don’t recover as quickly from illness, don’t sleep as well,  have higher systolic blood pressure, and show a number of adverse cardiovascular changes compared to people with friends.

So for me, becoming more social in general and not cutting myself off from others when things are not going well, is the thing I am working on changing.

How about you?  What is the one thing that you don’t want to die with?  Since life is unpredictable, and anyone of us could be dead in the next 24 hours, once you have decided on the change you want to make, start to change it right away.

Leave a comment and let the rest of us know what your change will be.