The One Who Dares, part two

"Bravery is believing in yourself, and that thing nobody can teach you." -- El Cordobes


Believing in one's self is a well worn (maybe worn-out) value in our society. I hesitated to use the above quote because of this. But I like that it comes from a matador and that it is about bravery.

I do think that it takes some bravery to believe in oneself in this world. So much of who we are is mitigated by others. We live in a social world and that is both good news and bad. Often social worlds are about social control. Expectations require us to be someone we are not.

One of the great things about being married to Carl is that he rarely accepts these expectations at face value. He questions quite a bit more than most and those questions can lead to a challenge to the status quo. Carl is quite willing to take the bull by the horns and that is a dangerous place to be.

Carl is fond of reminding me that he is quite good at spotting the "elephant in the living room." But I am not sure the metaphor is apt. The elephant implies something that everyone can see, but refuse to talk about. I think Carl is very good at seeing things no one else can. It is something obvious to those who would look but it is more than something no one will talk about, it is something that no one observes.

Maybe there is an elephant in the livingroom, but the room is dark and no one has enough sense to turn on the light. Carl turns on the light and sees the elephant and then says to the others, "see, there it is."

I don't know if any of this is making sense, but I think what I am talking about is twofold. One is that he has a keen sense of boundaries. He knows what he knows and he is unwilling to let others define things for him. The other is that he has a keen sense of observation. He knows what he knows because he is willing to look and he is good at looking.

All of this can be quite disconcerting to a world that is adept at hiding from truth and life. Carl is a lover of life in a world full of lovers of death.

"Believe me! The secret of reaping the greatest fruitfulness and the greatest enjoyment from life is to live dangerously!" Friedrich Nietzsche

But most people miss this about Carl. They see the depth of his perceptions and they think that because he is willing to point out problems that means he is negative. I have come to learn that nothing could be further from the truth.

Carl probably suffers from hope more than any one I know. I mean what I just wrote. He suffers from "hope."

Hope is a painful aspiration. It is often disappointed. Lovers of life are full of hope. It is a difficult task to hope and simultaneously let people make their own mistakes. Those of us who hope, often hope the best for others. But we cannot make others aspire to our hopes. We have to let go and letting go hurts.

But how else will we enjoy life? How else can we take the bull by the horns?

I have found more joy in the hopes of Carl Wilkerson than I can express.

Hope and knowing oneself -- these are the great lessons I have learned from knowing Carl. These are part of his story.

(Stay tuned for part three -- coming soon on One Who Dares, the blog of Carl Wilkerson.)