About 4 months ago, one of my best mates suffered a brain aneurysm. Not only did he survive, but he is on track to make an incredible recovery. The levels of resilience, courage and sheer grit he (and his wife) have shown are something that will inspire me for a long time to come. I was chatting to him recently on the phone while my son Noah was climbing around a playground near our home. At one point I mentioned that I better keep a closer eye on the little fella in case he snots himself. Diarmuid’s reply was simple and also quite profound – “better a broken bone, than a broken spirit”. As an orthopaedic surgeon with two young children of his own, Diarmuid knows a thing or two about broken bones!
We are living in times when courage is so important to many of us on so many different levels. We need courageous leaders, we need courageous health care professionals and each of us can benefit enormously by making courageous choices each day in our own lives. Although there is much fear in the world, I believe now more than ever, we have the opportunity to move through fear into a more courageous way of being. Fear resides in our head but courage rises up from connecting more with our heart and living more aligned with our soul. Courage grows from love. Love for ourselves and for those around us. Love can lead us to support those who need it and also to challenge those around us and have the hard conversations when needed.
I guess the essence of what I’m trying to say here is I believe now is a time when the world can be better served if we collectively connect with love and live more from our heart and soul than from our head. Living more from a place of love will enable us all (myself included) to more through our fears and channel this into courageous living. I wrote the following poem to try and capture the essence of this.
Thank you Diarmuid for your inspiration!
Better – a time for courage
Better a broken bone than a broken spirit,
Better a broken heart than a missed opportunity,
Better an epic failure than not even trying,
Better to be judged by others than living in fear of judgement,
Better to embrace discomfort than to avoid it,
Better to take a stand than to sit in quiet,
Better to regret a lived experience than to regret not taking a chance,
Better to live from heart than to be trapped in the head,
Better to regret the things you did then the things you could have done,
Life is precious, our time on this earth is a gift,
Each of us decides how we use this very precious gift,
The difference between treasuring and squandering life lies in our ability
to connect with our soul, embrace our fears with love and lean into uncertainty.
