Die Mut. has many different meanings to me. I will try to explain here what they are.
Mut, the German word for courage.
It describes for me the act of confronting our fears. Fears are often rooted in painful past experiences that we don’t want to live again, or the unknown future, which we think will be painful as well. When we show courage, we step up and confront our ideas of what might happen. We embrace the possibility of falling down, being hurt, rejected, failing, losing. All unpleasant situations, I must admit. Nevertheless, we open the door to the possibility of learning how to stand up after a fall, of recovering from pain, of forgiveness, of learning, of growing, of being faithful to our true Self. And maybe there might be another outcome as well, one better than we can imagine. Yes, there is an uneasy moment when we take the leap to step out of our comfort zone. However, it soon vanishes when we see all the beautiful new possibilities that were unthinkable before. In German, Mut is a masculine word, der Mut.
Die Mut. gives back space to the feminine.
Personally, much of my development has been about getting back in touch with my feminine side. As a man, we might think: “Why would I want to be more feminine?”. The feminine attributes don’t make us less of a man. They make us more of a balanced human. Because they allow us to feel all emotions, to show our vulnerability, to be soft, to cry, to listen while not trying to solve issues, to deeply care for someone. The fruits of this change have led me to be more authentic, to connect deeper to my Self and others, to become a better friend and a better lover.
In society as well, the feminine should have its fair share again. I’m trying to be a feminist. I use the verb “trying“ on purpose instead of “being“ because, as I’m not a woman, I profit from some privileges I am not even aware of.
Die Mut. resembles Demut. The German word for humility.
In a world where social media is omnipresent, we are confronted with images of perfection. Influencers show us their perfect lives, their perfect bodies. But are those images even natural? Many influencers earn a lot of money but how are they really feeling inside? Social media fuels comparison and influences greatly our unwell-being. Since appearing on our smartphones, mental health issues, depression and suicide have increased significantly.
I dream of a world where there is room for imperfection as well. Down days, mistakes, wrinkles, gray hair. Humility is for me the path to the acceptance of imperfection, the source of questioning and growth.
A funny confusion
And finally, Die Mut. originated by mistake. I was invited some time ago to speak on a podcast about open relating. I talked about the courage I had to gather when I came out to my family about my way of living relationships, knowing I was confronting their beliefs and was afraid of not being accepted and even being rejected. As I am not a native speaker in German, I used the wrong gender for the word Mut and used “die” instead of “der”. This made my friends laugh as they thought it was really charming.
