On Being Brave
Photo by Brett Jordan on Unsplash
Let us be the ones who are courageous;
who choose adventure over regret.
Many, many things in life call for courage: the need to act in the face of immediate danger; the need to confront powerful forces to correct injustice; the desire to share powerful feelings with someone who may reject them and, by extension, us; the need to place trust in someone from whom we need help, care, or love.
That last one is probably the least dramatic example in many people’s minds, but it’s not only the most ubiquitous test of our courage, it’s the one whose malfunction has probably cost us the most joy in the modern era.
Trusting others is an act of courage. It is often one of the simplest of such acts but is the lifeblood of joy as a way of life.
Ten years ago, for example, no one would have dreamed of getting into the back of a stranger’s car or staying in their apartment. Now, thanks to Airbnb and car services like Lyft and Uber, it’s commonplace. (The Anabaptists, cool kids that they are, were doing their version of Airbnb, called Mennonite Your Way, long before the internet.)
Trust is built and broken, the same way online and off: through the keeping or severing of promises.
While trust can begin to grow online, it is solidified in close physical proximity. That’s why when we meet our ride-share drivers, our trust in them and the sharing economy grows. We’ve closed the gap.
Of course, this trust can be broken in stunning ways; the internet, through people’s use of blatant visual distortion and propagation of misinformation, provides plenty of opportunities for this. Trusting communities require a balance between nurturing existing relationships and extending outward to form new ones. Mistrust can grow when communities only take care of “their own.”
Courage also calls for resilience, a kind of longitudinal courage that means not only standing up to a roaring lion in the moment, but being able to endure the repeated threat of that lion, perhaps hundreds of times over our lives, without becoming paralyzed in our existence- unable to leave our shelter for fear of lion attacks, extending our fear to all furry mammals, and so on.
If I affirm that the universe was created by a power of love, and that all creation is good, I am not proclaiming safety. Safety was never part of the promise. Creativity, yes; safety, no.
–Madeleine L’Engle, And It Was Good
Part of the illusion we’ve been sold by virtual worlds and visions of reality shaped by the marketing departments of corporations is that a life without struggle, threat, risk, or even challenge is possible if we do the right things, cultivate the right outlook, and of course, have access to the right technologies and goods.
This kind of lie- the promise of fantasy fulfillment, of utopia through consumption- isn’t new, but it’s become increasingly dangerous as the illusion becomes increasingly convincing. We can amass 1,000 “friends” without the emotional risk, effort, and social skills needed to actually make FRIENDS. We can immerse ourselves in virtual worlds that require a fraction of the effort, expertise, focus, or risk of a career, hobby, or real goal to deliver a passable simulation of success that- for a moment- convinces our dopamine systems that we have achieved something with stakes.
There is vital importance in taking risks and trying new things.
But we’re afraid. And it’s stopping us from living our lives fully. As Arthur Brooks writes in The Atlantic, “Fear of failure can have surprisingly harsh consequences for our well-being.” It can, he explains, lead to “debilitating anxiety and depression, a diagnosable malady called atychiphobia,” the definition of which is literally “an irrational and persistent fear of failing.” But even if it doesn’t reach that crisis point, he warns, “it can steer us away from life’s joyful, fulfilling adventures, by discouraging us from taking risks and trying new things.”
The most surprising part? The solution, Brooks explains, is not to “extinguish the fear itself” to become “fearless,” but to tame it. How do you do so? One simple word.
Courage.
For many of us, the first hurdle is honing the courage to take up the burden of the real world. No longer using the internet to hide. Removing barriers to our feelings by avoiding avoidance. We can hide by being quiet or loud, showing all of ourselves or nothing at all — any online action motivated by shame or fostering smallness. Hiding is showing the shadow self.
How do we hone courage? We do it in community, not in isolation.
Where is your community, and does it bring you joy? It takes courage to form real relationships.
The time you spend online and what you consume there is most often designed to be effortlessly convenient and abundant, thoughtless and unintentional, and ultimately in service of someone else’s values and goals, not your own. Algorithms measure the known, not the possible. Content curated to your past behaviour doesn’t challenge your curiosity or courage. Content served up binge-style, ready-made in endless quantities with more always on the way, asks no effort from us.
My friend Ted wrote a book called The Uber of Everything at a time when every Silicon Valley-bound start-up was calling itself the Uber of something. The Uber of Swimming Pools, The Uber of Car Rentals, The Uber of Snow Removal, The Uber of Whatever.
My advice to you? Be the Uber of Nothing.
Don’t worry about being everything to everyone. Focus on the relationships in your life that are good burdens. That is worth the effort.
Hone courage. Be you. Be brave.
The goal is aliveness.
The purpose is love.
Take up the good burden of being brave.
Good Burdens is in stores now.
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This post originally appeared on my dedicated Medium blog. Ready to hone courage? Sign up for The JOMO Method course today.
