You Are Not Using All Of Your Courage

In March, I was waking from a nap. A voice from between sleep and waking said clearly and a little louder than necessary,

“You are not using all of your courage.”

This wasn’t my voice. It was a louder, more compact voice, the same one that occasionally says my name as I’m falling asleep or waking. (This doesn’t happen often, maybe once or twice a year.) It’s probably a physiological glitch, an ON/OFF power surge through the amplifier as I enter or exit sleep, a hypnic jerk of audio hallucination. It’s not like I’m “hearing voices.”

“You mean in art or life?” I asked the voice.

The voice was gone but an answer flickered in Times New Roman inside my mind:

YES

Whether this message was a dream, a thought, or something like a sonic boom between layers of consciousness, I believed the voice. I wasn’t exactly sure what it meant, what it would be like to use all my courage, but I was pretty sure I hadn’t been using most of mine.

This curation of art was rooted in the text above but I was having trouble communicating the mixed metaphor. I rely heavily on metaphors to understand complex things or at least improve my performance (camshaft swap, intake manifold upgrade…). I was trying to explain how courage is not a car part, but more like the fuel or fire that moves though the parts of an engine. You can improve performance by addressing the parts.

Some of my work has been courageous and some has not. The opposite of courage isn’t cowardly; it’s comfortable, apathetic.

I was trying—mixing metaphors of muscle cars and body building—to explain how I think it’s possible to build a more courageous practice and how art can make us more courageous in general. I couldn’t even get the engine of that thought to turn over.

I was trying to articulate how courage is elusive but you can feel it in your anatomical heart when you think of your most courageous work or life decisions. Interestingly, it’s a feeling almost identical to fear. The word courage comes from the Old French cor, meaning heart → corage (with heart) → courage. I was trying to articulate something about courage but I kept getting sidetracked watching videos of modified engines. And I kept failing to say what I meant.

You Are Not Using All Of Your Courage

In the process of writing this, I asked the voice a follow-up question knowing the voice was long gone. It had said I wasn’t using all of my courage as if there were a fixed amount, a one hundred percent…Before I had finished typing my pushback, this phrase came to mind (in Times New Roman, italicized):

Top speed at full throttle on any given day.

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Tonight, tonight the highway's bright
Out of our way mister you best keep
'Cause summer's here and the time is right
For racin' in the street