When we throw cold water on every opportunity life offers us for fixing a situation, we exhaust ourselves and everyone around us. When we’re apathetic, we have an endless string of excuses for why we can’t act. The people who love and want to support us burn out and avoid us because they can’t stand hearing yet another reason for why we have no power to change our lives. Courage is the opposite of Apathy.

It makes us so cowardly that we float through our lives like ghosts, disconnected from any sort of purpose or passion. We fret about all that’s wrong in the world and in our lives, but we can’t recognize that we could make a difference. We don’t find the courage to change, and we don’t bother looking for it either……

…..We can steer the ship of our life and even summon the wind and change its direction, but to do so requires quiet acts of courage. It requires letting go of the need to move the winds for our own purposes and instead choose to move them for the greater good of all. It requires that we accept responsibility for what we change instead of ducking the consequences. And most of all, it requires that we be careful what we wish for, because what we dream, we will create.

– Courageous Dreaming: How Shamans Dream the World into Being by Alberto Villoldo