Not For The Faint of Heart

"It's not for the faint of heart, is it?"is the exact line someone experienced with such matters said to me recently with respect to being a landlord in the province of Ontario. My response? A compact: "No, it isn't." In that brief exchange and dealing with the near tail-end of the latest challenging situation as a small-scale landlord, did I leap across some chasm into the "people who are not faint of hearts" group? Well, probably not. But the line certainly did stay with me and got me thinking.

I believe that sometimes in life, fierceness is required: a fierceness that is not without reins but is grounded in some deep, wise, and powerful energy that rises up to defend, protect and guide how this should be done. I have not read much about the spirit of the warrior, though the idea and image of a powerful, peaceful warrior has been presented to me many times. I imagine this grounded fierceness as like the energy of a wise warrior, not oriented toward unwarranted menace but toward the preservation of integrity. Perhaps sometimes (if not always), drawing on this fierceness becomes an antidote to "faint of heart". One dons courage and proceeds accordingly.

Maya Angelou's poem, Still I Rise, keeps running through my mind as I type about this topic this morning. I suspect it is because there is a tremendous strength in the words, a grounded fierceness, or warrior kind of energy to be sure. A few excerpts:

You may write me down in history

with your bitter, twisted lies,

You may trod me in the very dirt

but still, like dust, I'll rise.

...

I rise

I rise

I rise.

If you haven't read it, or would like to read it again, a google search should lead you to the poem in full.

There is also no doubt the poem speaks of courage. Likely, courage and grounded fierceness go hand in hand. As I've previously mentioned, a question Peter Block's poses in his book, The Answer to How is Yes, is "what courage is required of me right now?" (p. 21). You could ask, what courage does this situation or feeling require of me? What wisdom? What grounded fierceness? Sometimes, it might be to speak up, to stand up, to stay the course, and sometimes it might be to change routes. It might be to work less, or less at certain things, to do more of something else, to breathe, to stay quiet, to be very gentle with yourself, or to be more still. What is your sense of this for your own life right now--a situation or feeling you may be experiencing?

If there is a poem or book you really like that comes to mind as you read this post, please share it by providing a comment to this post. (You can, of course, comment on other things as well!)