I have known a very few people who came into this world with enough natural confidence and inner strength to meet any chaotic circumstance with calm. Most of us do not have that innate skill. We must gain it through life-experience.
Horatio made me laugh when he told me that confidence was a fake-it-until-you-make-it affair. Confidence, he explained, is never a matter of knowing what you are doing; it is knowing that you have the capacity to figure things out – no matter what. The faking-it-part is more than a performance. It is muscle building. It is exercising and strengthening belief in the capacity-to-figure-things-out. For most of us mortals that workout never ends.
Sail toward the horizon. Take a chance. Do anything else. Try it. Try it again. Step into it. It will all work out in the end. You can do it.
My mentors, brilliant men and women who wrestled with their own unique doubts and fears, taught me that confidence was not something gained; it is what happens when a moment is fully occupied. To be fully in the present with what-is and not lost in a sea of what-should-be; presence is the muscle to develop. Confidence, like happiness, follows. It’s a paradox as all truths are paradoxes: you cannot control the circumstances but you can control how you are within the circumstances. So, be in the circumstances. The image that comes to mind is from Forrest Gump: Captain Dan lashes himself the a mast in the roaring storm and roars back-at-it, “Bring it on!” The inner storm meets the outer storm.
On a rainy Saturday afternoon we watched The Art Of Racing In the Rain, narrated by Enzo the dog. Enzo is in his last days and reviews his life because he believes that, if he can integrate life’s lessons in the short bit of time remaining to him, he will come back as a human We sobbed and laughed at Enzo’s life review. With our aging Dogga asleep at our feet, it struck a nerve.
“Dogga is preparing us,” Kerri said, her eyes filling with tears. I nodded. He is a magic dog and has been our teacher all along.
“We’ll be okay,” I say, not knowing what to say, wondering how we will be able to get through it.
And then I remember…the journey to “okay” will hurt, yet we will step into what-is-to-come as we did so long ago when we saw a sign that said, “Aussie pups,” and stopped “just to take a look”, not knowing that life was throwing us into a curve. We stepped into it fully, all the chaos and joy and love that came with the Aussie pup that stole our hearts and made us a family.
Staring down at Dogga, asleep at our feet, I have no confidence that I will be graceful in the hurt-that-is-to-come. I am confident that we will hold hands and feel it. All of it. All the gratitude, all the grief. Every moment. Every last ounce of the enormity.
read Kerri’s blogpost about COURAGE
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