COURAGE through acting a lot less courageously?

When I was unwell in 1997, a friend from France sent me a card with just one word on it, “COURAGE”. I wondered why he chose that word that comes from the French word for HEART.

If I believe these debilitating chest pains I am getting are because my heart is weak I’ll go nowhere today.

I’ve had my heart checked out at A&E and the doctor said, “Its fine”. He said my X-ray showed something wrong with my left lung. I do not know if the Amoxicillin capsules will put right that “something wrong”.

The chest I am getting go from; “hit with a baseball bat” to “stabbed in the ribs” (No, I have never been stabbed in the ribs but it paints a picture of how it feels).

It seems impossible to measure COURAGE.  Is my HEART still strong enough to do what I believe is right?

I just re-watched this 6 minute motivational video, called “Unbroken“. I see it has 44,179,159 views since it was shared on Sep 15, 2014. I believe most of those 44million viewers will have benefitted from those spoken words and images.

Today, dare I walk to the park to meet the other rebels and show that I’ve not been beaten by pneumonia or whatever label I’ll accept for “something in left lung”?

Will the cold air defeat me before I get halfway there?

Typing helps, as I have thought of something that for me will take a lot more COURAGE. This is to accept a lift in a friend’s beautiful Jaguar car and ride to the park in luxury.

To you, that may not seem so COURAGEOUS or rebellious… for me, it is tough, so very tough to have to keep admitting this war I have been fighting for nearly 2 years has very much taken its toll on my physical health. For me, it takes more COURAGE to say, “I feel broken but will act as if UNBROKEN”.

Sometimes “Act as if” is our best option. If I act well-enough maybe I will be well-enough.

Flashback to some of my oldest blogposts, still online, where I was writing about ‘act as if’: https://rethinkingbipolar.com/?s=act+as+if