Tuesday, November 23, 2010

When Bravery Fails

All---

So a good writing friend of mine e-mailed me directly after I posted about being brave and asked if I would still feel so strongly in favor of taking the brave chance if my bravery had come to naught.   I answered her but thought it was an excellent question and wanted to address it in some way publicly.

It's taken me a little while to decide how I want to approach this.  Finally, I decided to be straightforward up to a point and just beg your indulgence for the places where I fall short of complete vulnerability.  Because the truth is, I have been brave and failed.

There was the time when I showed a girl a group of oblique, experimental love stories to the girl they were about, knowing she was intelligent, and hoping she would get the message.  "I wish someone would write stories like that about me," she said.  "Someone did," I told her, holding my breath.  "I know," she said. Her eyes sparkled dreamily.  But my love was mature and adult and she wasn't ready for that.

There was the time I held a photography exhibition in college as a non-art major, something rarely done at my school.  It was the most public exposure of my creativity.  I took a chance in my subject matter and approach, sort of bridging the gap between art and photo journalism.  The exhibition was an utter failure, and I heard almost nothing but a week of terrible comments.  There were exceptions, a few who got what I was doing, but most thought it was boring, uninspired, unoriginal.

There was the time when I was a kid and I gutted out a surgery that had a long, painful recovery and ended up not resolving the issue.

There was the archaeology expedition in the middle of nowhere in Alaska where I fell and cut my neck open with a log in a river that was thick with bacteria and decay.

There is the list of foods that I still cannot eat because of smell associations from the maceration room.

There is all the work, dedication, and excitement that went into relocating from Alaska back to Indiana to go to grad school and pursue forensic anthropology, only to find out, at the end of an incredibly painful year that I have a long-diagnosed, severe learning disability that did not interfere with field work but made the graduate classes literally just about impossible, meaning that I had just short-circuited my entire academic career by taking a chance on a second masters rather than taking either a safer-bet PhD program or research assistantship.  My life, in many ways, remains in a vortex because of that.

So, yes, sometimes you act in courage and things don't work out.

But then, other times you act in courage, and you get to jump out of helicopters into swamps, dig in cemeteries from 3000 BC, evade a drug cartel in Mexico, help put away a man who killed three people on a whim, or marry your precious soul mate.

And when you don't win, at least you were brave.  Acting in fear, you never win, and at the end of the day all you have is your fear.

Even with the trade-off losses, bravery wins.

.Nevets.

10 comments:

  1. Such a thought-provoking post. I suspect it was really hard for you to write about all those challenges you've faced, so kudos to you! I'm impressed you've still come down on the side of bravery, particularly with the additional stuff you weren't able to share. I've had some pretty awful things in my life as well, but you really do have to stay positive and keep facing the world with your head held high and a grin on your face (sounds like you're there as well).

    Hugs,

    Rach

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  2. Wow, there's so much about you I didn't know. I think you are a brave man. Some of the things you've done, I could not do. I know I wouldn't be brave enough but I also know that if push comes to shove, I would do the bravest things for my family.

    CD

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  3. It's amazing that you continue being brave, and considering it the way to go--even after all that has happened to you. It's easy to say you're brave, but not so easy to prove it or follow through.

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  4. You're a gem, Nevets, and one hell of a brave guy.

    ~bru

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  5. Good post. Got a lot of thinking and even more acting to do...

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  6. You do seem to be a particularly brave kind of person, Nevets, but of course being brave must involve the overcoming of fear. If someone isn't afraid of jumping out of helicopters into swamps, then that isn't brave; but if someone is terrified of spiders, and manages to pick up a tiny on, then that is brave.

    For me, brave involves dinner parties (giving them) and heights and deadlines, and playing the cello in public (which is why I never made the grade; not brave enough). But I no longer mind spiders.

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  7. Oh - and happy thanksgiving, Nevets! (not sure when it is exactly, but I wish we had one. November needs cheering up).

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  8. @Rach - It's true! I'm glad you've made it through your struggles with energy and a great outlook! *hugs* back!

    @Clarissa - It's definitely a matter of priorities. There's no reason to be brave for things you don't care about. There's every reason to be brave for the things you do care about.

    @G'Eagle - Thanks. I'm not brave, so much as stubborn enough to not want fear to make my choices for me. :)

    @Bru - Aww, thanks. :)

    @Scott - There you go! Think lots, but act on it!

    @Frances - You are 100% right. And I wish you guys had a Thanksgiving, too. I remember when we were in Germany for a half a year as a kid there was a Thanksgiving but it was really early the fall and seemed less special because of it. On the other hand, it was actually tied more directly to harvest and made more logical sense.

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  9. Wow, yes! Bravery is a different face for everyone, and the whole idea behind it is that it CAN fail, but you were brave anyway. It isn't bravery if success is 100% guaranteed. Did you really evade a drug cartel in Mexico?

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  10. @Michelle - Exactly! And, while the phrase is more dramatic and exciting the reality, which was pretty boring and routine, yeah, I did evade or at least work to avoid a drug cartel while in Mexico for my thesis... Some of that will probably end up in a story some time so I don't want to spoil it. I can tell you off-blog sometime, though.

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