Finding Courage – Jivan Das

The line that hit me most from Das’ Finding Courage meditation was “When we act in the world, we first must know how we are, because our actions will be imbued with our own qualities of beingness. If we are confused our actions will take on the quality of confusion. If we are fearful, our actions will take on the quality of fear.”

It got me thinking about Zimbabwe. What does a lifetime of cowering do to one’s psyche? How have we been damaged by it? How do we recover? How does it affect the way we turn up to everything we do, every relationship we enter, every opportunity that life gives us?

It made me sad for my country – and I came here for courage. Maybe this is it. Facing the truth and dealing with the emotions it brings up.

Sometimes the pictures we need to paint in our heads to keep our sanity are so different from what is happening in reality, that we must be insane to sustain the balance.

Maybe that’s courage.

A vendor walks away with her wares as soldiers disperse demonstrators on August 1, 2018, during a demonstration demanding results of a general election in Harare Zimbabwe.
PICTURE: AUNTHONY ZINYANGE