Courage and belonging

sillygleekt has written a fabulous post of thinky thoughts on intimacy, courage, and belonging, as demonstrated by the characters of Kurt and Blaine on Glee, and how it relates to his/her own life. It's really great stuff. I encourage you to go read it, if any part of the topic interests you at all.  It dovetails with a lot of thoughts I've been having about the courage to know who you are and to be that person. 

sillygleekt explains the idea of courage as stemming from having a strong internal sense of love and belonging. S/he cites Brene Brown, a social work researcher, who explains that the word courage comes from the word for 'heart', and that the original definition of courage was 'to tell the story of who you are with your whole heart.'

I love the character of Kurt on Glee, who is full of this kind of courage.  I see in him who I want to be.  I’m much more like Kurt than I ever was in the recent past, as far as having a strong internal sense of love and belonging.  Blaine, on the other hand, Kurt's eventual boyfriend, is a somewhat frustrating character to watch.  As a viewer of the show, you want to like him, but you feel like you never really learn very much about him. He seems to always be suppressing who he really is, to the point that it's difficult to even *tell* who he is.  

Despite my strong affinity for Kurt, in most (well-written) fan-stories I read, I find myself identifying with Blaine. Blaine to me is the characterization of the path, whereas Kurt is the end goal, the ideal. This is also why I am so emotionally attached to Kurt as a character, and to Kurt/happiness. He has become a symbol to me of courage and strength.

(Chris Colfer himself has come to symbolize things for me too, which is a story for a different day.)

And this is why I am so in love with Glee, and why it has completely knocked me upside the head with a lesson I probably knew, but, you know, we’re all always re-learning our own lessons again and again, aren’t we. Long before Blaine was even a twinkle in the Glee producers' eyes, I watched an entire Season 1 of Kurt and said to myself, shocked: Why am I trying to blend in by not being who I am?

My entire summary of what this silly show Glee means to me: Be Who You Are.

Edited to add June 2012: Wow, a lot has changed since I wrote this. Blaine has disintegrated on Glee as a character, so it's probably telling that the only place he made sense was in (some) fandom stories, and Kurt's storyline was dropped/unresolved at the end of S3.