Okay, yesterday’s prompt was kinda abstract, hopefully today will be a little more straitfo–OH COME ON.
January 2nd:
How Are You Brave?
(Obligatory reminder to subscribe to my once-monthly newsletter here, which rounds up everything I wrote in the preceding month, grants access to a curated members-only Spotify playlist, and includes a piece of exclusive bonus collectible content I will NEVER repost anywhere else, ever!)
Gentle reader lemme tell ya: a brief survey of the other Bloganuary participants who have already finished for today because they don’t feel the need to make a goddamn production out of everything reveals that this was not a popular question, which is interesting and points to some weird things about our culture.
We’re trained in a kind of belligerent humility, where we aren’t supposed to recognize any positive traits or qualities in ourselves, but almost in a kind of competitive way? I asked my wife how she thought SHE was brave to maybe calibrate my answers a little and we got into a fight about it because I think she’s the adorable barbarian queen of all she surveys, a five-foot-nothing Boudicca who turned several offices full of macho men into polite little boys who put apples on her desk and thanked her for the privilege, and she thinks she’s a wee churchmouse who’s never done anything and is afraid of everything, because the only options our culture offers us for thinking about ourselves are that or, basically, Trump.
I mean, look at me, I’m writing a takedown of enforced, performative humility culture that nobody asked for instead of just answering the damn question already, because my instincts tell me that the only way to win is not to play the game, but in this specific instance I DID volunteer for the game as tribute, so okay, here goes.
I…don’t know what ‘brave’ means, in the context of me. I don’t feel like it applies; most of the challenges I face are dumb and exhausting, but not frightening or risky in any meaningful way. I guess the bravest thing about me is that I’m willing, always, to do what it takes to become a better, kinder, wiser version of myself, just like Squirrel Girl believes I can as long as I’ve got one breath left. Sometimes that means deciding to go back to school and finish my Bachelor’s, no matter how much further into debt it’d push me or how much of my time it took. Sometimes it means actively unlearning a lifetime of the garbage racist, ableist, sexist, jingoist, and otherwise wrongheaded-and-hearted programming every American comes pre-installed with, which requires setting aside belief in my own position as the Protagonist and Automatic Good Guy of reality. (That one, frankly, was a relief.) Sometimes it’s figuring out how to still be a family after an Ancestry test reveals some…surprises about your relationship with your parents. It’s hard to look at any of that and call it ‘brave’ that I did it, even though I would and will and do applaud them when I see them in the people, but maybe that’s the last challenge, the final bravery: to accept that those things we find noble and courageous in others are also noble and courageous in us, even if the very idea sounds like naught but purest horse-popcorn.
You are good, you are strong, and you deserve to think of yourself like you think of the strongest, toughest, most dauntless person you’ve ever known.
Be brave enough to believe it.
Yr. Obt. Svt.,
–The Bageler