Courage in Hard Times
Kirstin Hotelling Zona
Hello, Lovely.
Six weeks into the new year, and the word that keeps coming to mind is courage.
I look out at my students, their expressions obscured by a sea of masks, navigating the upheaval of dreams they worked hard for with grace, determination, resilience, and creativity, their enthusiasm for learning very much in tact (especially if given the chance to share how they feel about their experience), and I see courage.
I see courage in my colleagues who, while often exhausted and increasingly angry at the degree to which higher education prioritizes profiteering over education and often seems to have lost sight of faculty altogether, continue nonetheless to create and deliver brilliant and impassioned content to our students and community.
A couple of weeks ago I had the honor of sharing my remembrances of a dear friend and mentor at his beautiful memorial service; as I journeyed to find the words I wanted, and as I listened to others’ stories of our friend, to readings of his poems and songs sung in his honor, I was brought yet again to the feet of a life lived with immense courage: a life lived in pursuit of aliveness, tenderized by loss but willing to risk it over and over in order to be all-in, to love deeply, to connect meaningfully, to care openly.
Courage can be muscular and insistent, but courage can also be quiet and subtle. And it can be both.
The courage I care most about cultivating in myself and helping to inspire in others is the courage to live authentically. It’s what I see in the quivering tips of Van Gough’s irises, what I hear in Janis’ throatiest reaches in Cry Baby, what I feel in the poet John Keats’ “wakeful anguish.” It shows up equally in Mary Oliver’s quiet “attitude of noticing” as much as in Walt Whitman’s “barbaric yawp.”
Courage is a quality of hereness. It’s sheer vulnerability— a willlingness to choose feeling over going numb even when afraid. It’s daring to speak our truths and act on them even if doing so disappoints others. It’s learning to stay with our own most uncomfortable emotions when it’s easier to run away. It’s asking for help and love when we need it. Oh, such courage is hard! But damn, it feels good—and does good—when we do it!
Love,
Kirstin
