My grandmother wrote a book. It took her twenty years and she died far too soon after she had finished it, but she did finish it. She saw it published and read. I have read it several times, but it is a single sentence that stays with me. A line I have said to myself nearly every day since I read it. She wrote:

“The most important things in life are courage and love”

Throughout the day, as work and time get to me, I will often repeat those words to myself. Then the curiosity will take hold, and in that I will find a distraction, but a welcome one.

Courage, to me, is fairly self-explanatory. Take the risk, make the call, approach the person, do what you have to do that you so fear.

But love? That one holds me in chains, locked in its meaning. Is it love what you do? Is it love for your family, or is it love for the person you want to spend the rest of your life with? By love, did she mean passion? Have passion for what you do? Follow your heart? What did she mean and why did I not ask her all the years I had the chance to?

Courage, to me, is definitely one of the most important things in life. Without it, we will never do what we dream to do, we will never take the risks that separate us from the crowd; the things that make us unique.

Is love so important? It exists in my life but I have never been sure if I am capable of displaying it in any form other than the manufactured version of it that I feel it to be. This always reminds me of another quote, of which the author is unknown to me.

“What is life without love?”