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February 18, 2007
This past week I was courageous. It was my first trip alone to Iki, the local grocery store in Klaipeda. I walked down the aisles looking at the strange and foreign foods. Everything was in Lithuanian.
I thought to myself: I need milk. I need Cheerios - the frosted kind. I need my cottage cheese and JIFFY peanut butter and wheat bread.
I searched for a thing of familiarity. I passed the cleaning section, where I could not tell the difference between laundry detergent and fabric softener. I came to the meat. Pig’s feet, eyeballs, and other random animal parts make my stomach turn. A fish head stared back at me from under its plastic wrapping. I moved on to the dairy section and struggled to read the label on a carton. When did yogurt come in so many different colors? When did cheese come in so many different flavors? This was not part of my upbringing: You eat what you like; you like what you know.
But that day, a sense of courage overcame me. I grabbed an oddly-colored block of cheese, a carton of what I believed to be yogurt, and a gallon of milk, not even caring what percentage it was. No one told me that I was courageous by doing this, not even the teller as she scanned the items into the register, but in my heart I knew that I was.
It occurs to me now that courage is not necessarily the absence of fear; it is the willingness to act despite fear. It takes a lot of courage to release the familiar and seemingly secure and to embrace the new. But as Alan Cohen (author of "Chicken Soup for the Soul") once wrote, “There is no real security in what is no longer meaningful. There is more security in the adventurous and exciting, for in movement there is life, and in change there is power.”
I have to admit, I am a bit of an adrenaline junkie. I remember the first time I went bungee jumping when I was studying in Cyprus. As I prepared to jump, a close friend of mine told me that I was crazy and courageous at the same time.
Crazy, adventurous … yes. Courageous? I am not so sure. I had watched more than five people jump off the platform before me and survive to tell their story. Jumping was a familiar motion. I had done it hundreds of times before. Just never from that far off the ground.
But being in a foreign country, in a foreign market, with foreign food all around me and my stomach growling from hunger, I have the opportunity to be brave. I have to make a decision. Act courageously or starve.
Sure, I could have went to McDonald’s and found something familiar, but why live a little, safe life? Why not eat my brand-name foods, never venture outside of my security bubble, keep to only what I know and understand?
Here is why: my heart is bigger now - more fits within its chambers. Each time I let go of my security blanket and find myself somewhere new, I inevitably discover something I could have never known if I had sat inside, safe and sound.
As for this time, here is what I learned: yogurt and sour cream come in the same packaging, not all cheese is good, and when you live off of fat-free milk, watch out the first time you try whole milk. Your stomach may hate you. But nevertheless, I tried it and now I can try something else next time. I can keep trying until I get it right and I discover what I like.
Courage, for me, is not about jumping head first toward the ground below, watching the waves crazy beneath you as you wait for the cord to catch. I think it means living with a level of awareness and fluidity, about being able to bend to meet the demands of the day. Courage means saying what you think to those you love, staying up to see the sun rise and not fearing the fatigue that is sure to follow. Courage means being open to change, when change is a possibility. After all, courage is the French word Coeur, meaning heart - having it, willing it, grabbing it, living life with a bit more beat.
