on Types of Brave

Hi, I’m Ella. Short, loud, and in love with flowers. I am currently away from my home in Australia, travelling around California, U.S. as an “Omg I finished high school, let me travel and explore as a celebration before the actual hard work of university begins” trip.

I bought the aeroplane tickets at 1am on the night before a significant English assignment was due. I blame the automatic e-mail notifications from my airline, my tendency to procrastinate and the extreme fatigue that comes with the final year of high school. However, no matter how much I try and pass the blame, I ended up with tickets to a country I had never visited before, and a half-finished assignment with a dangerously close deadline.

I messaged a friend of mine asking her to get flights too. I knew would be down for a trip to the U.S, she had been the year before, and had fallen in love with New York City. “Oh sorry El, I can’t, I don’t have enough money at the moment” was her reply though. No worries, I have plenty of friends would love to travel, I’ll find someone else. Except I didn’t. Everyone was broke, busy or not willing to spend 13 hours in metal can hurtling through the sky with me (I don’t really blame them to be honest). So I ended up in LAX, a ginormous airport with 7 terminals, 11 parking lots, 17 bus stops, 130 taxis at any given time, alone, solo, un-accompanied. Oops.

There are different types of brave. There is the kind of bravery that saves another life (this dude literally risked his life to save his comrades). The kind of bravery that leads to an incredible discovery. And the kind of bravery that borders on stupidity.

My kind of bravery is definitely in the latter category. Everyone that I have spoken to about this trip thus far has commented on how brave I am, flying to a country I haven’t been to before, where I know no one, all at the ripe age of 18. And everytime someone would mention my bravery, I would scoff. “I’m not brave,” I would think to myself while trying to smile politely, “I’m just stupid enough to want to and to actually do something like this.”

However, I have begun to realise that perhaps I am braver than I first gave myself credit for. Travelling by yourself allows for a lot of time to think and ponder and philosophize. And I have been contemplating bravery. While travelling isn’t a revolutionary concept or as difficult as trying to build a successful start-up social media company, I have come to realise that it certainly isn’t a walk in the park either (even though I have spent a lot of my time over here walking in parks). I had never been overseas completely by myself. I had never been the United States. I had never stayed in an AirBnB before (how I had booked all my accomodation). I had never caught an Uber before. So many firsts, but I managed them all (and only cried once!). It was pretty brave of me to buy those tickets (even if it was masked with exhaustion), brave to say good bye to my mum and step on to that aeroplane and brave to explore Downtown Los Angeles as an unaccompanied, young female. But a Brave-Stupid cocktail, that was mostly stupid (but with a fun and colourful umbrella).