Country Road Take Me Home

If you know me, you probably already know this about me: I have zero decorating sense.  Seriously, I live in a house with very little decoration and with several rooms with no curtains, and I've lived in this same house for more than a dozen years.

It's not that I don't like home decor or fabric or color - it's that I like so much of it that I can never decide what I want to have displayed, what I want to live with on a daily basis.  It's also a little bit that I've never liked knickknacks, things that some people might call "collectibles" but that I usually refer to as "dust-catchers."  If I have something out on display in my house, it's because it means something to me, not because a magazine or some decorator who doesn't know me suggested it or because it seemed like there was a hole on a bookshelf that needed to be filled.

That said, I know what I like in home accessories, furniture, and art when I see it.  And when I come across something in my price range that stirs up memories and/or emotions, I usually try to find a way to work that item into the scheme of our house.

Awhile back, I found out about the work of Kallie North, a photographer who lives in a small town in the Mississippi Delta.  She's from Texas but married a farmer from the Delta and settled down in the area near where I grew up.  She's a songwriter and a singer too, but it's her photography that makes me feel like she sees things in that area the way I remember them from many years ago.  

I've decided that I am going to order some of her prints to frame and display in my house; I love the way she shoots things that others probably don't notice and the way that, in her pictures, the beauty of things that probably isn't usually recognized is made clear to see.  I love the colors and the shots of crops and things that are unique to the Mississippi Delta.  The agriculture-related photos remind me of my dad, whose career was in the field of ag-marketing and consulting.  I exchanged a couple of emails with Kallie a few months ago, and she has agreed to take some photos this fall of the grain elevator where my dad worked many years ago.  I plan to display those shots and a few others of hers in the Mud Room of my house so that I can see them every time I come in the back door.

Here's a link to her photo gallery:
http://www.kallienorth.com/portfolio

"Beauty of style and harmony and grace and good rhythm depend on Simplicity."  ~Plato

Courage

"Courage is rightly esteemed the first of human qualities ... because it is the quality which guarantees all others." ~Sir Winston Churchill

When I was a freshman in college, I took a class during which we learned how to rappel.  The culmination of the instruction of that part of the class was that each student had an opportunity to descend by rope from the top of a tower that stood three stories high. 

At the beginning of the semester, in my 18 year-old mind, that endeavor didn't seem to me like it was going to be too tough.  I wasn't scared of heights, and I was in pretty good physical condition.  I listened carefully to the instructor talk about the technique and the safety information, and I watched videos of others rappelling.  When the day of the descent finally arrived, I confidently climbed up to the top of the tower, hooked in to the roping gear, and backed up to the edge.  And then I looked down - and that's when the fear hit me.

I tried in vain to talk myself into stepping off the ledge for several minutes.  The instructor, who had positioned another instructor at the top, shouted words of encouragement to me from down below.  My legs just wouldn't move.  Finally, the guy at the top said, "The longer you stand there, the harder it's going to get to take that first step.  On my count of three, you're going to step off.  One, two, ..."  I took a deep breath, and I did it.  The warmth of the sun on my face, the feeling of gliding so freely, and the big burst of adrenaline all hit me at once, and I loved it.  It was, in the true sense of the word, awesome.  

But the best part of the descent was at the bottom, and it came from the words spoken by the instructor, words that I have thought about many times since that day:  "And that," he said as he turned from watching me to address the rest of the class,  "is a perfect example of the difference between courage and bravery.  Bravery is something a person can be born with, but courage is something we have to dig deep to find.  It's natural and often even smart to be afraid, but, as long as you are prepared, you can't let that stop you from forging ahead - and that's courage."

Before that day, I had never considered that there was a difference at all between courage and bravery; I actually thought they were synonyms.  Upon further consideration, though, I began to see that there is a distinction between those two words.  Bravery is the ability to confront pain or danger when one is not afraid.  Courage, on the other hand, is the ability to take on a difficult situation or pain in spite of the presence of fear.  Courage requires using a thought process in order to overcome a natural emotion; it is the willful choice to forge ahead regardless of the possible consequences.  A courageous person understands the risks of the task but is driven to participate anyway for a greater purpose.  

From my perspective, there are a couple of different types of courage:  Physical Courage, which often involves overcoming fear of the risk of pain or death to do things - like rappelling, getting up to try again after falling off a bike, running into a burning building to rescue someone, climbing a mountain, or undergoing a medical procedure.  Here's a video that gives a great example of physical courage (it's 17 minutes long but well worth taking the time to view it!):

And then there is Mental Courage, which may involve doing something that poses a risk of something negative socially happening, like embarrassment or rejection.  This includes things like standing up to a bully, giving a speech to a crowd, disregarding peer pressure, and being a leader.  It also encompasses ethics and doing the right thing, even when that puts one at risk for consequences such as disapproval of others.  It's pushing past a fear of rejection to put oneself "out there" by being true to one's own beliefs and essentially to oneself.  And that is how courage is linked to the most bonding of human traits: vulnerability.  A person who has the courage to accept that he isn't perfect but the depth to love himself and to see himself as worthy anyway not only ends up being a happier person but also gains a different kind of strength than cannot be gained in any other way.  And, in accepting himself as an imperfect being, he shows others that variances - and vulnerability - are the essence of the beauty of life.  

What I have taken away from that is the understanding that courage has to do with perspective and with the way we adapt to the challenges and to the circumstances of our lives.  

Without a doubt, what my dad had a great amount of physical courage, and I think that was likely something about him that a lot of people noticed and admired.  What I have found to be even more impressive about him, though, and what I hope to go out having had is the courage to be imperfect, the compassion to be kind to oneself and to others, the conviction to stand up for myself and for people and things that are important to me, and, last but not least, the courage and the confidence to show vulnerability, which, really, is the thing that connects us as human beings. Vulnerability, like the imperfections seen in granite, is what makes people unique, memorable, and beautiful.