Le Grand Courtage––More Than Wine

I recently attended a networking event.  I arrived early and headed straight to get a drink.  One bar station was serving just wine––sponsored by Le Grand Courtage. I’m not a wine connoisseur so all I can say is that I enjoyed my “Blanc de Blanc.”  However, what got my attention was the company’s motto: “embrace life, dream big, accept all invitations.”

I later checked out their website and this is how the founders (American) describe their story:

Le Grand Courtâge is our vision.  We decided to pursue our passion, take a risk and move to France with the goal of making a well-priced sparkling wine unlike any on the market.

Our motto is ‘Embrace Life.  Dream Big.  Accept all Invitations.‘ and to that end our goal is to provide an affordable luxury that is perfect for “courting life” and celebrating its special occasions, as well as all of the every day moments in between.

I’m charmed by their romanticism, but even more, I’m challenged by their commitment to “courting life.”  During the past weeks, I’ve reflected on what a person needs in order to court life.  Sometimes the demands of life are so harsh and mercurial that the notion of “courting life” seems a down right radical act of bravery.

Embrace life. 

I think you can only embrace life if you refuse to see life as the enemy. Perhaps that strikes you as an odd notion, but I once had a client whose mantra was, “life’s a bitch and then you die.”  In some perverted way, life for him was a form of punishment.

The opposite of love is actually not hate; it’s indifference.  The opposite of embracing life is walking away from life.  For the person living in a dark place of disappointment, the mantra he or she clutches is, “why bother?” 

I think embracing life requires that we wrestle with the question, “if I can’t have everything I want, then what does any of it matter?”  

Embracing life means “bothering.”  It means wanting and coming to terms with the reality that not everything can be ours.

But here’s the thing––maybe what you want isn’t worth having.  Maybe what you want isn’t really what you want.  Maybe what you want now will come to you, but only later.  And maybe what you want is wonderful and you should have it, but it will be the one thing you’ll never have, for a host of reasons.

Sad for you, though, if you don’t see what else is being offered you because there is always something being offered.  And maybe that’s what embracing life is all about––seeing and receiving the something else that is being offered.

Dom Helder Camara, a theologian and wise man from Brazil, encouraged the discouraged with these words: “Accept surprise that upsets your plans, shatters your dreams, gives a completely different turn to your day and who knows? --to your life.”

To embrace life is to embrace surprise.

Yes, life is hard as so much conspires to pull us apart from our deepest longings.  Yet, when we come to the place of our greatest fear, there we will find freedom.