8 - Strength

Courage, Bravery, Compassion, Resilience, Pet Ownership

This is a fun one to describe, because a lot of people think it's strange that Strength as a woman patting a lion on the head.

Perhaps one might imagine Strength to be an impossibly buff dude stackin' weights and getting yoked: but nay!

It's just this lady giving a friendly lion a nice chin scratch. Who's a good boy?

That's the message, here: that strength doesn't mean raw physical strength, but strength of character, strength of resolve. She's not wearing armor, she's not afraid of the lion, she's in control of the situation.

She's not invulnerable: she's not hiding her vulnerability. She's wearing a soft cloth dress, not armor. She's simply willing to own her vulnerability, to look past it, and to go scratch the lion's chin anyways. Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the assessment that something else is more important than fear.

Forming a relationship with an animal is also one of the things that requires the most strength: it's hard to fall in love with something that has a lifespan that is so much shorter than ours. We must brace ourselves from the very beginning for the inevitable heartbreak of losing one of our closest friends. Forming close relationships knowing full well that the heartbreak of their loss is inevitable - that takes true courage.

This is what Strength is: staring at the void, staring at pain, and saying "no". Not today. Today we find a sunny place and give our lion friend a chin scratch.