The Gift of the Courage to Continue

Positive Pensées

Kathy King

“Success is not final; failure is not fatal; it is the courage to continue that counts.”

Winston Churchill 

https://winstonchurchill.org/resources/quotes/famous-quotations-and-stories/

We sit, we dream, we dread, we pray.

To live out the dream in our own special way. 

The thing about dreams coming true is the tenacity and will to see things through.

The hard work, the discipline, the grit and desire. 

All have to be experienced, even as we tire. 

We tire of toil, we fall down, and lose our way. 

But remember dear reader, life is all about grace. 

Grace for yourself, grace for others and courage are a necessity. 

Remember we fall, we even scrape our knees, but we always get up.

We see more clearly and carefully and we shake off the dust. 

Have courage to continue even when you stumble and fall and even lose your way.

Remember to reach that pivotal moment, let courage continue to bring light to your day.

*I wrote this last Christmas.  As I sit at home and contemplate life… this one little writing spoke to me. I need a good dose of prayer and courage to continue these days for sure.  

Today is a particularly lonely day at our home, the Christmas decorations are up, the house is festive. Yet it is still hard to be cheerful.  After spending time meditating and counting the blessings that abound in life, I realized that it is the absence of the sound of kids that caused the sense of melancholy.  They are all off at college living their lives.  This is a parent’s dream, yet it also has a sense of sadness.  The first success so to say is that we have launched six adult kids into the world. Now it is as if life has taken a little falling down.  The knees are scraped, we are looking around and wondering.  What next?  Courage. 

Be courageous even when you only have a little to give. 

Rather than wallow in pity it is time to be courageous.  To take on the situation that scares us.  The next chapter.  After a little prayer and mediation it is time to do something new, learn a new avenue of expression.  Spend more time with my husband.  The possibilities are endless.  In the grand scheme of things we all have our moments where we have to face what scares us and be brave. I have written a good deal about musicians and music.  Out of curiosity I did a little research about which famous musicians have/had severe stage fright.  I was actually a little surprised.  Amongst the classical musicians there was Frederic Chopin, Glen Gould, Vladimir Horowitz to name a few.  Chopin wrote an immense body of piano works that in my humble opinion are some of the best pieces ever written. 

https://www.classicfm.com/composers/greatest-classical-music-history/

Many Great Musicians had much fright but were courageous enough to share their gifts with others.

Glen Gould was known for his mastery of playing Bach’s Inventions with ease.  Vladimir Horowitz was probably one of the best pianists of the twentieth century. All of these great composers suffered some form of stage fright.  If you ever look up Glen Gould or Horowitz you will see they played with such finesse and ease you would never know they are really nervous. 

In more modern day music musicians such as Eddie Van Halen, Brian Wilson and even Cher suffer from stage fright.  Eddie van Halen some would argue is one of the best guitarists of our time.  I would say he is on par with Brian May or some other notable guitarists.  If you watch him play, he looks like he just does it with his eyes closed, never paying attention to the frets on his guitar.  Brian Wilson’s body of work is pretty amazing.  He was the primary driver for the Beach Boys.  In each of these stories that I read they all had times where these performers experienced both great success and great failure. 

https://entertainment.howstuffworks.com/10-musicians-who-suffer-from-extreme-stage-fright.htm

It takes courage to learn from success and failure.

Some took some time away from performing to dust off their knees and get their chutzpah back, while others tolerated the booing crowd and kept going.  In each case, they never gave up their courage.  They continued to learn from both their success and their failures to keep soldiering on and finding a way to perfect their craft.  As a musician, we are a judgy bunch.  We want perfection as if Bach himself never made a mistake when he wrote his Concertos and Preludes and Fugues.  I would wager he had a dud performance and an amazing performance.  In all of these situations there was a common theme.  Courage.  I will leave you with the words of Theodore Roosevelt: “Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.”.  Find that courage and continue.

https://www.whitehouse.gov/about-the-white-house/presidents/theodore-roosevelt/

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The Quacktastic Adventures of Ellie and Lord Barks a Lot