In this post, let’s turn our attention to music that has been dubbed the finest in middle-aged hip-hop. Let’s also turn our attention toward courage.

Courage was the first song I heard by the Canadian band, Abdominal and The Obliques. In the song, the band is joined by Abdominal’s mother (an impressive rapper herself). I’ve since discovered that Courage is like so many of the band’s songs, a wonderful weaving of story, words, and rhythm. It grabbed my attention immediately.

The song made me think of all the ways people don courage every day, every where. This includes an awareness of the millions of behind-the-scenes kinds of courage people exemplify every day—facing difficult things with courage and integrity (as best they can), facing anxieties in order to do things that are helpful or meaningful, or, as in the lyrics below, listening to “the voice that keeps calling our name”—listening to and following what calls to the heart.

Then somehow that voice that keeps calling our name,

my boy heard, he listened and everything changed…

…It requires courage to keep listening to that voice…

 

—Abdominal and The Obliques, from the song, Courage; album, Sitting Music; (c) 2012. Lyrics Source: abdominal.bandcamp.com/track/courage-feat-my-mom

The song also made me think of the strong relationship courage has with compassion—how in compassion-focused therapy, one of the qualities of the compassionate self that we talk about is the quality of courage. Listening, I felt touched and inspired by the beauty and bravery in courage, and by all the people who practice it.

Have a listen.