{"id":731,"date":"2011-09-04T13:46:45","date_gmt":"2011-09-04T17:46:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.katrinakenison.com\/?p=731"},"modified":"2011-09-04T13:46:45","modified_gmt":"2011-09-04T17:46:45","slug":"courage","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/katrinakenison.com\/new\/courage\/","title":{"rendered":"Courage"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Toward the end of my month of yoga teacher training at Kripalu last spring, each person in my class was handed a sheet of paper and a pen and asked to write the words \u201cWhat I want to tell you is. . .\u201d<\/p>\n

The assignment, then, was to write a letter, a letter from the radiant, wide-open, yoga-saturated, heart-full self of that moment to some beleaguered, tired and doubting future self who might one day be in need of a little bucking up.<\/p>\n

These letters, we were assured, would arrive in our mailboxes at the right time.<\/p>\n

There were so many wild and wonderful and out-of-the- box experiences crammed into those thirty intense days of teacher training that I didn\u2019t even remember writing a letter to myself. When a hand-addressed envelope arrived in my mailbox a week ago, I didn\u2019t recognize the writing, which was much lovelier than my typical, hasty, printing-cursive hybrid. It seemed odd that the return address was my own. I sat down outside and read words that I had no memory of putting to paper. It felt as if I\u2019d suddenly heard from my own best friend from long ago, a soul mate whose memory I cherish but who I haven\u2019t seen or even thought about for a long time. To get a letter from her, out of the blue, was an unexpected gift. To realize that this distant, nearly forgotten person seemed to know exactly how I\u2019d been feeling lately, and could say just what I needed to hear was like having an unspoken prayer answered.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen it\u2019s a choice between love and fear,\u201d my wiser self told my struggling self, \u201cchoose love.\u201d Tears rolled down my cheeks. Sometimes, when things are really hard and scary and not the way I want them to be at all, choosing love over fear seems crazy and impossible. But of course, love really is the only good choice. It\u2019s just that choosing it can sometimes require so much more courage than I think I have.<\/p>\n

In two days, both of my sons will head back to school. At our house right now, the bedrooms look like they\u2019ve been ransacked, full of clothes and twisted bedding and backpacks and shoes and notebooks. (Both boys claim that what’s going on up there is a “deep clean”; to me it looks more like a deep shuffle.) The TV is tuned to the U.S. Open. The kitchen has been turned into Poster Rolling Central — Jack is working for his dad, earning money by stuffing hundreds of posters into mailing tubes. Steve is affixing labels. Henry is deleting two thousand songs from his iPod. The washing machine is running nonstop. The food is getting eaten as fast as I can cook it. As I sit here typing on the porch, I can hear the three guys laughing in the other room, commenting on the tennis, enjoying this last full day of summer vacation. Tonight we\u2019ll go out for our ritual meal at Chili\u2019s (democracy prevails on this front; alas, the vote for Chili\u2019s is always 3 to 1) and to see the new Steve Carrell movie. It\u2019s all good.<\/p>\n

Except for the moments in the past week that have been awful. The ones that have pushed me to the outer limits of my abilities as a parent. There have been some of those, too. If you’ve ever shared your life with teenagers, you can easily supply your own details. And you probably also know that giving an adolescent the space he\/she needs in order to grow up is as necessary as it is risky. Kids make mistakes, and our job as parents is to step back and allow them to fall, and then to make sure, too, that they actually learn what it’s like to hit the ground.<\/p>\n

\u201cI feel completely lost,\u201d my son Jack said to me the other afternoon. I knew what he meant. The truth was, I was feeling pretty lost myself. But then I suddenly realized that I did have something to offer him. \u201cYou know,\u201d I said, \u201cyou don\u2019t have to figure everything out now. All you need to do is make the next good choice for this moment. You can certainly do that.\u201d And then I left him there to figure it out. I put on my sneakers and went out for a run.<\/p>\n

Choosing fear would have kept me in my chair, talking, trying to repair the damage and make things right for him. Choosing love means allowing him to own the struggle that rightfully belongs to him. It means having faith that this, too, shall pass.<\/p>\n

\u201cParenting requires courage,\u201d my friend Bruce wrote in a profoundly affecting essay <\/a>this week. \u201cCourage to set limits and bear anger; courage to let go and tolerate fear that our kids may come to harm; courage to trust that we and our children are enough.\u201d<\/p>\n

That pretty much says everything I want to hold on to during these final days of summer. I could pray for all sorts of things as my children make their way out into the world, but I doubt that even my most fervent appeals for their safety, health, and well-being would do a single bit of good. Those pleas are born of fear, of my own sense of helplessness in the face of dangers and environments and situations that aren\u2019t mine to control. And so, I pray instead for the only thing I can really hope for: courage. Because courage, of course, is love in the face of fear. Somehow, after a month of yoga and meditation, a soft, vulnerable part of me knew that very well. Back in the world, faced with problems I can\u2019t solve and children I can\u2019t protect, I forgot.<\/p>\n

Put two parents and two nearly grown young men in a house together at the end of a long summer, and it\u2019s probably inevitable that everyone involved will do or say something that they will later regret. On this peaceful, companionable Sunday morning, I can now cut us all that much slack. The good news is: choosing love over fear brings us back to one another. And as soon as we stop feeling afraid of the dark, we are free to enjoy the simple pleasures of a few moments of light. As Bruce writes<\/a>, \u201cTo fully feel fear, and then manage it, quell it, contextualize it, rise above it . . . now we\u2019re talking courage.\u201d<\/p>\n

Yes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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