How is courage emboldening me to act?

To forget the pain of the past and recommit to loving unconditionally.

I’m thinking today of the lines of Shakespeare’s Sonnet 116:

Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O, no! it is an ever-fixed mark,
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth’s unknown, although his height be taken.
Love’s not Time’s fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle’s compass come;
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

I am so grateful for today’s blog on this site and the inspirational quotes therein, especially Brené Brown’s “Only when we’re brave enough to explore the darkness will we discover the infinite power of our light.”

The Word for the Day with Malala Yousafzai’s quote also references the power of light: “At night our fear is strong. . . but in the morning, in the light, we find our courage again.”

My painting education was based on Goethe’s Theory of Colors, and our first experiment of looking through a prism at the border of dark and light demonstrated how both are needed for the visible spectrum of light to appear. If I want a life of vibrancy – which I do – I must embrace my darkness with courage and remember that it is better to light a candle than to curse the darkness. The light will always prevail.