Courage (part 2)

Last Friday we saw the play “Into The Woods” by a local High School. Throughout the movie I could not help but think about courage. About half way through the play my seven year old son looked up and said “everyone in the woods has problems”. Even at age seven it is recognizable that we all have problems that we go through in life. The path changes; or as was said in the play “the path loses us”. We encounter giants. Relationships are difficult. Allowing children to grow up is difficult. We seek to escape into the woods in hopes of changing the reality of our daily life only to find that it creates confusion and our wishes are not what we thought they were. Life takes courage. We think that courage is for the heroes and forget that the fairy tale is really about us. So we resort to using deceit and following our emotions rather than truth. We compare ourselves to our neighbors and culture rather than an unchanging foundation for evaluating our lives. It is a spiritual battle; a battle to live life with courage.

Then Saturday afternoon I watched the movie “Click” and was again confronted with this week’s theme of courage. He lacks the courage to go through life. At one point in the movie he says that no matter what decision he makes, he disappoints someone. So he makes selfish decisions repeatedly. His wife even replies by saying that he should start disappointing the right people. For some reason, when faced with tough choices it seems that people are more comfortable disappointing those closest to them rather than those at work, school, or other less intimate relationships. Failure to be courageous often results in long term loses in our lives. The spiritual battle continues.