Courage Project

Yesterday was a weird day, considering it was the day after Christmas. Most years, this is the laziest day for my family. But this year was just odd. My dad had to go out of town because it was Monday, and Monday's are travel-out-of-town days for my dad, even on day-after-Christmas this year. This being said, this years day after Christmas was the opposite of years past.

Kyle, my younger brother, has been patient, but his cabin fever reached a breaking point. He asked me to drive him into town so he could see friends. I had wanted to spend day with my family since my Mah was going back to work the next day, so we all rode together to hang with his friends. My Mah and I made some errands up to waste time until he was done, and afterwards, we all wanted to see a movie. We decided on We Bought a Zoo, which I was surprised everyone would want to see it. I know I had for a while.

The movie was every bit of what I had expected and hoped for. As I had told my dear friend when describing it, "it was my type of movie." Basically, the movie hit me in all the right ways. It was very uplifting and inspiring, which is a reoccurring trait of mine. What I took away from the movie besides the great scenes that touched the romantic in me, was courage. I feel like I have been writing about courage a lot lately, or things that could use courage. Courage to seek out someone I like. Courage in situations that I fear. Courage to not falter in convictions about myself, to not forget my own self value.

Matt Damon's character talks towards the end of the movie about how it sometimes takes "20 seconds of insane courage" for something great to happen. He said that, I my mind instantly raced to my own life. I thought, "How many times have I been in a situation in which I needed courage, and I was inches from something great, something truly great, but failed to act? How many times did I choose to stay comfortable instead of testing the waters? How many times have I let my fears of outcomes dictate my decision to go for something truly wonderful? It may seem like no big deal in that moment of decision, but how different would things be for me if I had taken risks and been courageous a handful of times in the past.

This thought, and this movie came at the best time for me. Its amazing how things work like they do, but the past few weeks, I have been trying to take small, yet steady steps to being more courageous. Its funny to say it like that because courage has connotations of big, extravagant acts, like saving someone from a burning building. But for me, its on such a small scale, yet so important to me. These past weeks, I have been trying to face situations that call for courage head on, and sit in my discomfort, and in a way wait it out. Sometimes the situations aren't always comfortable, but I am finding, in little ways, that if take a small step of courage, I can get something good out of it.

I am going to continue taking these steps, and gradually do it on greater scales. I am sort of calling it my Courage Project. It is a personal thing, but I hope I can see results from it in aspects of my life like with people I want to be around, fears I have, and decisions I make. I feel positive about things to come from this project, and I think by giving it a name, though its not official, it will hold me accountable to it. More on this later for sure.