Being Fierce

I cannot and will not cut my conscience to fit this year's fashions. Lillian Hellman

One of the qualities that I most admire in a person is a capacity for fierceness. Lillian Hellman stood and said the above sentence to the entire McArthur hearings board back in the late fifties during their anti Communist witch hunt. Fierce.

I interpret this quality in the most benevolent sense of the word, closer in meaning to passionate than nastiness. When I recognize that someone has a fierce quality about them, they're the ones I want on my team. They don't give up and are unafraid of road blocks, they drive around them. Most everyone in my family is fierce and so are my friends.

Most readily this fiercesness is seen in sports and competitive contests. I have a grandson who doesn't just practice basketball, he absorbs it. He'll shoot baskets until he makes thirty free throws in a row. What's impressive about that? He was 5 years old when he started this. Five. Then I have a granddaughter who doesn't just play soccer, she vaults her slim body around the field like her life depends on it. She was moved from her age group to the level above and she is only ten and she's out on the field with all of these twelve year olds. Impressive. Many years ago a little girl we knew, Leah, was as passionate and fierce about basketball as my grandson. In those years she couldn't find any girls as competitive as herself and so she started to play with the boys. Now Leah is a woman and she's in an all male field and handles that just like she did the basketballs, with grace and agility.

I have noticed through my more than thirty years as a psychotherapist that the people who make a difference in their lives are the ones who have a degree of fierceness. When that happy combination comes along with a passion to do good in the world, watch out, things are going to happen. My husband is exactly like that. He is getting close to retirement but he has loved his job, loved all of the people that work with him and loves the cause of trying to save and protect Washington state from the forces of evil. His passions and his fierceness has helped not only the state but also has kept this marriage wonderful, fulfilling and exciting. I recommend it.

You gain strengty, courage and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face.  You are able to say to yourself, "I lived through this horror. I can take the next thing that comes along." You must do the thing you think you cannot do.  Eleanor Roosevelt

Without qualification some of the fiercest people are the ones who have faced down a dreaded illness. My brother in law Dirk, went about facing his cancer with aplomb. He had his horrible times with outrageous spiking fevers and had to be hospitalized. Then when we'd visit he always made us feel that he was the gracious host welcoming us into his home. He helped my sister Sally with their taxes the day before he died, he was just that kind of guy. Although he lost his fight with cancer, he never lost his dignity or generosity.

I have a dear friend L who was diagnosed with stage III breast cancer, very awful and very scary. She lost so much: money, her Phd program; her business; and even her breast. Yet amidst all of these losses she maintained her close contact with her partner, family and friends. It was the fiercest battle I've ever witnessed, she was so sick from the chemotherapy. Ultimately she was triumphant and six years after the diagnosis is all clear, cancer free and well.  I told her when I visited her through the years of her battle, "You were just like Merlin, you went from being very old, an eighty year old with the first round of treatments to a seventy year old with the second round and a sixty year old by the time you finished." I am happy to report she looks younger than her mid fifties currently. What an inspiration and a blessing she is to all of us in her life. This is a special inspirational kind of fierceness.

Pray for the dead, fight like hell for the living.   Mother Jones

What if you have lost your cuttting edge and are adrift in apathy and mundaneness? The following are some suggestion to instill some of that fierceness:

1. Time to turn off all your electronics.
2. Time to get off the couch, and be determined to move around.
3. Time to look around for what you find interesting in this world.
4. Time to think about helping others or helping the world. 
5. Time to hanging out in the library.
6. Time to waltz yourself through the Dewey decimal system and figure out what is attractive to you. People? Animals? Art? Sports? Building? Crafts? The array of books on all of these subjects is phenomenial. Can't hurt to wander through the stacks and it just might make for a life changing afternoon.

God knows we could use another heart and hand in the good fight for world peace, ending hunger, eliminating abuse of all sorts. Surely there is a cause that intrigues you. If not a cause, how about a fun, crazy, hobby: belly dancing, paragliding, dog walking, baby sitting, mentoring, tutoring, etc. Who knows it might just lift your spirit and make you soar. Go get 'em.

                             Granddaughter who knows a quick way to soar.

susansmagicfeather  copyright 2011 Susan R. Grout all rights reserved