Systemic Virtue: FORTITUDE FRIDAY! 12/27/24
Fortitude: Strength of mind enabling a person to bear pain & adversity, or encounter danger with courage.
Forging Forward with Fortitude when emotional pain arises.
We’ve all got it at some point throughout life, emotional pain. A longing, sadness, loss, grief, heartache, lack, rejection, and so on. It pops up every now and then. Sometimes I long for something in the past that is gone. Experience that sense of rejection, perceived or real. Or feel the burn of salt sprinkled in a wound, whether unintentional or purposefully placed, by another.
This is part of the human experience, to feel what some might say is the opposite of love. But is it? There is never an absence of Love, it is omnipresent. Isn’t the want for the very thing being longed for some shape or form of it? I would say emotional pain feels more like an absence of joy.
In the past I would spend days, sometimes weeks swimming in emotional pain, unaware that there was a ladder, or refusing its existence. Truthfully, there were some years in there. Yikes. Looking back, it seems so strange to have clung to this ache or sense of —- I’ll call it —-un-joy. I can feel it now, just thinking about it, weighing so heavy in my chest.
Foraging & Sowing Seeds of Joy
Forging forward is to remember to go foraging for the other places in our lives where Joy resides. I found one of the best solutions to my own emotional pain is to look for ways and places to infuse Joy into someone else’s life. Because -in my gray haired wisdom, I know now, that when I’m not doing that, I am smearing the unjoy all over other people. What a drag! And oh so boring.
Another way I forge forward with fortitude is to look around me. Good Lord, my life is blessed with some simply amazing people and creatures. People with huge hearts and strong backbones. A Canine Companion that is clearly Divine. And I consider how - at some point - these people and creatures were not in my life….and then they were! There is fodder for the future. What amazing adventure awaits? This has proven to be a resource of strength when I encounter emotional pain as I remember to turn my gaze toward my gifts. I am not suggesting this makes pain go away. What it does is make it tolerable. In yoga, this is one of the Yamas: Non-attachment (Aparigraha, one of several moral codes). In Christianity, this is one of the many flavors of Forgiveness.
It is good to drink from the well of un-joy on occasion. To feel, un-joy is not a bad thing. Like breathing, in order to feel the greatest expression of one side of something, its pendulum must swing to the greatest expression of opposition. Within that space of opposition is opportunity to look within and ask the haunting questions. As the pendulum comes to stillness, it rests squarely in the Center of Equilibrium, and the answers reveal. And there is a knowing within the self, like the point of a gyroscope standing on its all-seeing point of axis.
Your Greatest Expression
This is the same in the body. When the body moves into the greatest expression of an inhale, followed by the greatest expression of an exhale, and then the breath come to rest at center point, all the layers of connective tissue have reached their greatest expression in all 3 planes (and more dimensions!). Not only is the mechanism of breath holding court in its healthiest position (your skeleton and muscles), so too are all the organs and systems that are embedded within that fascial matrix, as they just got a full massage. This is how both huge belly laughter and giant ugly sobs are a super exercise for your diaphragm. And for your heart, because your heart is riding the waves on top of that magic carpet- the diaphragm.
Its easier to lift a leg with a smile on. (Try it out).
Being present in the valleys of life is part and parcel. The trick is making sure to journey back up the hill where the horizon is clear. Enter Fortitude. Because sometimes that valley can have a heavy draw and drag. And contemplating that journey out of the hole and up the hill, my blood would feel as though it had turned to molasses and the hill a frozen tundra.
In the valley, you have to go foraging to find the people, experiences, and natural things that are salve to the emotional pain and food for the soul: Inspiration. Fortitude is to learn how to breathe Spirit back into your moment. Like pulling out of the agony and recognizing the beauty of each snowflake on that frozen tundra: how the sunlight singles out one flake and twinkles off this tiny fleck. And how that fleck of light can almost blind. And with shielded eyes, look around and see the multitude of flecks glisten like stars in a white sky. In these instances, what happens next is that my dog bolts ahead me, and my heart feels the Verb of Love. Then I send a picture of this sweet dog - a shooting star in the starlit whiteness - to my boys. And I smile.
Chocolate & Drumbeats
For me, keeping Fortitude well oiled is like having a spare chunk of rich silky chocolate in my back pocket (or freezer) for emergencies. As it permeates and spreads, things naturally get richer.
Fortitude echoes the reverberation of love’s power by way of the drumbeat of your heart to the pound of your feet on the ground as they hike up that hill. On the way, all the other virtues begin to help carry the load. Like Hope, from Wednesday’s Hump will hold onto that expectation of what will Be at the peak, Temperance as self control: one foot in front of the other, keeping your eyes looking up, and thoughts borne of virtue.
Giving Friday a Friendly Foraging and Forward-Forging partner as Fabulous as Fortitude ensures the Freshest and Finest chunk of emergency back-pocket chocolate will always be there for you.
One of my favorite chunks of chocolate that beats the drum is this little prayer I wrote years ago and recite in varying versions regularly:
Please Allow me to Remain Steady On Path To communicate intelligently, Articulately, with humor, patience, kindness and humility Dismissing all foolishness Forgiving it all Remaining diligent and disciplined in thought, word, and behavior.
Love,
Mom (Carly)
I hope you are enjoying these posts. Eventually, I *WILL* get one up for each day, and then add as the ‘system’ calls ;)
Kindwhile, I encourage your comments (whether here or in private). Please share Systemic Virtue Liberally!