Everyday Heroism: Is it Better to be Brave or Safe?

Have you noticed the cultural dichotomy around heroism lately? The two newsworthy stories that come to mind are the human chain formed by dozens of ordinary people to save the lives of a family being swept off the coast on a Miami beach, and the courageous men who gave their lives protecting women on the Portland train some weeks ago. In both cases I celebrated their heroism, noting that this is the kind of behavior that makes America great, makes the human race great, as it’s not an isolated American experience. These acts of everyday heroism, spontaneously born from that inner well we sometimes forget we have when going quietly about our Walmart lives, are part of what restores my faith in humanity and helps me to continue to believe that good will triumph, when push comes to shove. In spite of copious evidence to the contrary on a given Tuesday afternoon.

The dichotomy I’ve found interesting is in the reactions to the two stories. Humans of the internet seem to have unanimously lauded the self sacrifice of the men on behalf of the persecuted. No one called them “dumb” for risking their lives on that train. But in the other case, numerous comments have been made pointing out how dangerous that human chain was and that more people could have been killed. The comments are not wrong. It was dangerous. There was additional risk of life. There almost always is in a truly heroic act. Does that mean we shouldn’t act heroically? Is one life more valuable than another? Is my life more valuable than hers? Should we standby while someone dies, waiting for another, more qualified person, to act?

These are big questions to be wrestled with, on a personal level, as families, in communities. There are no easy answers, but they are still worth grappling with.

“A hero is no braver than an ordinary man, but he is brave five minutes longer.”

― Ralph Waldo Emerson

Heroism is something that has been inculcated in young people from birth in various times and periods of history, it still is in many pockets of society, but I’m worried that on a grander scale, at least in the North American experience, the example of the everyday hero has fallen from grace.

There are several good reasons for this, reasons that I support, actually. The changing of the narrative around the “weak” who need to be rescued (often women, in the role of distressed princess) is one. That’s a narrative that needed to change and I’m glad it has, but with the passing out of vogue of those kinds of stories something was lost on the heroic end of the spectrum. Because many of the hero tales were drawn from a religious or particular moral base they’ve largely fallen out of the school curriculums and living rooms as well. I don’t disagree with the premise of that decision either, I don’t want schools teaching religion or your moral code over mine any more than the next independent thinker does. But have we thrown the baby out with the bath water? Is there a way to use these stories, these tools, to elevate the virtue of heroism without debasing another segment of society or forcing a particular world view? What we’re left with are superhero movies that strike me as a mile wide and an inch deep when it comes to inspiring and instructing young people on the deeper values, consistently cultivated, that eventually result in the intestinal fortitude to act heroically, not just show up at the theater in a mask and cape, fan-boy style.

“Become major, Paul. Live like a hero. That’s what the classics teach us. Be a main character. Otherwise what is life for?”

― J.M. Coetzee

When my children were very young and I was wrestling with the dark themes of many of the traditional tales, Vigen Gurorian’s writings on fairytales and the development of moral imagination found their way into my hands. Unpacking the role of these stories in discussing the realities of human existence too dark and terrible to frame with a small child in the “real world,” his work was useful in helping me understand how to wisely apply these stories to the educations of my children. And so, we read them all, the dark and the terrible, the hilariously silly, the fantastically surreal, until my small heroes were out battling the unseen evils in their forest in a fantasy world they created called “Elsvania.” It was a very serious game in the development of their characters. Every now and then, as adults, they will talk together about some aspect of their elaborate role playing and how that became real to them in ways I didn’t fully appreciate when they came in covered with mud, wooden swords in hand, breathless, from having defeated The Dark Lord.

“Bran thought about it. ‘Can a man still be brave if he’s afraid?’

‘That is the only time a man can be brave,’ his father told him.”

― George R.R. Martin, A Game of Thrones

My first and best lessons in bravery came at my father’s knee

All my life he’s been a hero in the ways that matter most, and example of fortitude, constancy, generosity, and muddy-boots ethics. From the time I could walk there were endless lessons in safety, the necessity of preserving one’s self as a gift to the community, the science of reducing the danger through education, quick and careful thinking, the creative application of resources, and the necessity, the absolute necessity, of bravery.

“Be brave,” was a regular admonition, and to hear, “Oh you’re being very brave, Sister!” was high praise indeed. Crying over small things was not encouraged. Appropriate suffering for the greater cause (someone else’s enjoyment of a day, the acquisition of knowledge, or a skill, like building a house) was expected and rewarded. Others centered thinking with an appropriate value of self was a constant theme. A reminder that strangers were simply friends we had not met yet, sisters, mothers, sons, grandparents, the beloveds of folks who might be family to us but for a slight shift in the universe. These are people to be treated gently and preserved as if they were our own.

In my experience, a good part of whether one behaves bravely, or not, stems from how one thinks about other people and their value, versus her own.

I received some private criticism this winter after publishing the story of pulling a young man back from the brink of his death. What if I had died myself? What if he had pulled me down too? Didn’t I know that drowning men were some of the most dangerous? To which, as I ask a counter question: “What would it do to the inside of my soul to watch a man die when I had the opportunity to prevent it?”

When I slid my glass across the table to Rosa with an admonition to, “Watch my drink, I’ll be right back,” and ran for the beach it wasn’t without consideration of those things. That’s why I grabbed a life jacket. As I paddled the skin off the balls of my hands I was running through the checklists in my mind, keeping my eyes firmly on the black dot of a bobbing head as the waves rose and fell. I didn’t know yet that he was drowning, so I assumed the best and prepared to help a man treading water get his kayak back, just like I would have done if I’d watched my own son tip his boat and let it float away. This was simply the right thing to do. Did it require bravery? Yes, and in equal measure preparation.

Here’s the key point, in my estimation: Bravery is drawn from preparation

There are people who are “one off brave,” yes. Sometimes they get lucky. Sometimes they heroically trade their lives. But regular acts of bravery, lives that are characterized by heroism, are almost always the result of intelligent, almost instant choices borne from years of intense training. Soldiers, fire fighters, life guards, rescue teams: We would all agree that these people are heroes. Very occasionally one dies in a heroic act, but most of them live long lives doing deep good for the community, not because they are measurably different in their level of fear, but because they have trained and prepared, strengthening their physical bodies, conquering their minds, and learning the skills necessary to safely be brave.

“Some things must be done however much we wish to avoid them.”

― Michelle Zink, Guardian of the Gate

I said to my dad, over tea in his sun room, some weeks after the incident on Laguna Apoyo, that I never wanted to do that again. The young man’s eyes haunted my sleep for rather a long time. My dad looked at me with his eyebrows down and that intense face he gets sometimes and said, “What? Sister? It’s good you were there. You need to hope that next time you’re there too, so you can do it again! What if you hadn’t been there?” And I was appropriately chastened.

What I meant, of course, is that I hope there is never a need to pull a son from a lake again. Ever. In the history of the world. But, of course, if there is, and if I am there, I will sprint for the beach and steal a kayak, because that is what I have been raised to do. And it will be an honor and a privilege to do so.

There are a lot of people wringing their hands over the current states of affairs, from teen culture and failure to launch millennials, to the looming dangers of extremist religion, the nuclear tests of North Korea, and the instability of the financial markets. There seems to be a growing sense of Us vs. Them, at least in the United States, perhaps elsewhere as well. It feels, in many quarters, like there is a collective battening down of hatches and peering out from between the protective slats of our white picket fences with suspicion at anyone walking freely in the streets and laughing. It feels, to me, like we’re making a collective turn towards the kind of “safe” that isn’t balanced with “brave.” The kind of “safe” that isn’t balanced with brave is selling ourselves short. We’re letting people die, my friends. Individually, and collectively. And I’m not okay with that.

“Courage, sacrifice, determination, commitment, toughness, heart, talent, guts. That’s what little girls are made of; the heck with sugar and spice.”

― Bethany Hamilton

So what’s a woman to do?

I’ve been writing this piece for almost a month. Which is to say, I’ve been thinking for endless hours as I walk, cook, think, ride the ferry, talk with friends, and unpack boxes into my new house. My brain keeps coming back to two things: Equip myself & equip others.

There’s no way to explain courage, or when it should be applied, in a technical manner. Courage and action are that nebulous mix of preparedness, blended with mental toughness, and the expectation of one’s self that when the moment appears, of course you’ll do what needs to be done. Those are not things we can make snap decisions to “be” in the five minutes before bravery is called for. “I would have had to let that man die…” Rosa breathed, with tears in the corners of her eyes, when, almost an hour later, I managed to drag a wet and bedraggled young man into the third chair at our table. “I need to learn to swim.”

And therein lies the message.

We need to learn to do stuff, not just for ourselves, but for the loved ones we haven’t met yet, for our communities. We need to take first aid certifications and keep them current; go beyond chest compressions to wilderness first aid and life saving. Make sure you take infant courses, even if you’re sure you’ll never have one. Your sister might. Or that lady down the street… my Grandmother saved her baby, with paint still on her hands; she ran so fast.

Keep a strong body so that you can link arms out into the ocean with other brave people, climb a mountain, carry a half grown child, or haul someone larger than yourself to safety. If your body is weak, work with what you have to start building it, right now. You don’t know what will be asked of you next month, next year. Be ready to meet the challenge.

Make it your business to know what to do in case of all sorts of emergencies. Become so safety minded that bravery comes naturally. Read the stories of heroes, the epic and the everyday, to yourself and your children and foster an emotional climate of courage.

Given the choice, I’ll choose bravery

Of course I cannot speak for anyone else, and there are many factors that affect someone’s ability, physically, mentally, and emotionally, to act with bravery. But I’ll tell you, that for myself there is no dichotomy.

I have a strong commitment to safety in all things. (Ask my kids how many times they have heard the life jacket or condom speeches.) Risk management is key to reducing the call for acts of heroism, and irresponsibility that puts another life at risk is inexcusable in my book. Safety first.

However, given the choice between safety and bravery, I’ll choose bravery every time. I have conditioned myself, and my children, to do this, and to do it with the highest safety margins possible. I have thought about the fact that this may, one day, lead to my death. But also, it may not. And if it does not, who will live, or live better, or enjoy greater comfort or safety, because I chose to take a calculated risk?

My dad taught me this. Travel taught me this. Raising four kids and loving all of their many crazy friends and their families taught me this. Laguna Apoyo reminded me of this. And it makes me proud to see evidence of it in the world, in the form of young men who would stand up on a train to protect women they did not know, and strangers who would form a human chain to rescue a family. Yes, there is risk, there always is in everyday heroism. That’s a risk I’m willing to take, because…

audentes Fortuna iuvat

************

This fall, I’ll be speaking at the Hero Round Table, in Brighton, Michigan, October 23 & 24, 2017. If you’re interested in training heroism into yourself and others, I highly recommend that you join us.

Photo Credit: Celine Nadeau