I love driving home in the dark.

Where I live, there are no streetlights and, more often than not, I am the only car on the road. The road twists and turns through glorious avenues of trees that stretch up on both sides and meet high above. It is like driving through a living tunnel, breathing as the leaves rustle in the breeze, leaving me feeling covered, protected, and in awe.

For me, the drive is often on autopilot, unless I am very careful to remain present. I know every bend and curve in the road, every crest and pothole. It is an especially lovely drive without other cars, as I can pick the line that misses most of the potholes. I say most, because it is impossible to miss all of them.

It wasn’t so many years ago that I lived in the city, rarely saw a pothole, and couldn’t drive 50 metres without seeing ten other cars. How much life has changed.

Yet, it would have been so much easier to stay. I had a good job, a great business, happy and settled kids, and friends and family close by. The urge to move was intuitive, strong, primal even. It came from a place of deep, gut-level knowing rather than intellectual logic.

And so, we came.

We made the decision on a Saturday in mid-January. We travelled down to inspect rental properties on Wednesday. We returned the following Wednesday to pick up the keys to our new home and complete school enrollment interviews for the kids. Six days later, we moved.

From the decision, to moving day, was exactly 17 days.

Don’t get me wrong; we had been talking about moving for six months. I’d applied for jobs, completed two interviews, and hadn't landed either, though I did have the promise of contract work "when you move down". So, we took the chance. I am so grateful we did, as it turned out to be the best move we’ve ever made.

Following that deep, intuitive knowing, when it is entirely unclear how things will work out, takes a very particular type of courage. In Australia, we often call it a "have a go" spirit. It isn't "to hell with the consequences", but rather: if we never ever go, we will never ever know.

It reminds me of a famous passage that author Brené Brown often references, which inspired the title of her book, Daring Greatly (2012). It comes from Theodore Roosevelt’s 1910 speech, Citizenship in a Republic:

“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”

What I love most about this speech is that the accolades don’t go to the victor. They go to the soul brave enough to follow where their heart calls, regardless of the outcome. To me, that is true courage: being scared, yet still taking steps forward into the unknown.

We so easily forget to look back at the times when we were brave, when we were in the arena with dust, sweat, and blood on our faces, with no idea how it would play out. Once we know the outcome, it’s easy to look back and mistake our past choices as inevitable, logical, or ordinary. But it wasn’t logical or inevitable at the time. We didn’t know the ending yet. We only had what we hoped, what we feared, and a clear choice: to step into the arena, or stay on the sidelines.

It’s not about what you know. It’s about having the courage to take action despite the uncertainty.

I know every bend and pothole on this road today. But once, I didn’t even know where it would lead.

☙ A Seed to Carry ❧

● What step would you take today if you had the courage to act without needing to know the outcome first?

● What is really holding you back from taking that first step?

● What brave decision have you made in the past that you now write off as "inevitable" or "just logical"?

May this day bring you peace, and may you feel the warmth of the sun on your face.

Until next time,

Leeanne

P.S. I’d love to hear your story. Reply directly to this email: What is something you once did that felt terrifyingly brave at the time, but seems almost inevitable looking back?​
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