Audacity

128 Marbles 
With audacity one can undertake anything.
Napoleon Bonaparte

    Audacity fascinates me.  Intrepid humans make me cheer their fearlessly daring acts (and sometimes they make me thankful that I’m not their mother). They embody T.S. Eliot’s belief that, “If you haven't the strength to impose your own terms upon life, you must accept the terms it offers you.” The audacious are the ones that have that strength.  
     Lady Gaga, the pop queen of boldness, has built her brand with audacity.  What interests me is her confidence that her fame was destined even before she “arrived.” As a result, she deflected everyone who told her otherwise. She says, “I had a boyfriend who told me I’d never succeed, never be nominated for a Grammy, never have a hit song, and that he hoped I’d fail. I said to him, ‘Someday, when we’re not together, you won’t be able to order a cup of coffee at the fucking deli without hearing or seeing me.’” She was right;  He was wrong.  
    To be audacious is to be “bold or insolent, heedless of restraints, as of those imposed by prudence, propriety, or convention.” Yet I wonder, although those restraints may look like they are imposed from the outside, how many of us are really chained from the inside?  Perhaps Lady Gaga was in a relationship with a guy who didn’t believe in her because she still held that shadow belief about herself.  Was he an exterior mirror for an interior belief?  Did he graciously play the role so she could cut off her last chains of self-doubt and comfortably take center stage?  
    As girls, we are often taught to avoid rocking the boat.  The audacious rock the boat without care of who’s not holding on.  They are the ones who change history by their bold moves such as Rosa Parks’ refusing to go to the back of the bus.  They go against the tide and impose their terms on life.  What is deemed audacious is indicative of the times - who would think it bold for an African American woman today to remain seated in a bus whilst a white woman stood? Yet a bold move in history made our current reality as it is.  
    Benjamin Disraeli claimed, “Success is the child of audacity.” Winston Churchill said, “The first quality that is needed is audacity.” Goethe wrote, “In every artist there is a touch of audacity without which no talent is conceivable.” I say, “Bring it on.”

What would it take to be more aware of the chains that hold you back? What would it take to cut those chains and embody audacity?