Is It Worth Being Brave For?

I love new beginnings, and this year has been a treasure. The beginning of May brought in the New Moon, and last week, The Greatest Kid On The Planet and I stood at the end of our driveway and stared at the most amazing waxing crescent. The waxing moon is said to symbolize growth and intention and the “birth” of new things to come. For us here in Georgia, we’re getting ready for more adventures. The Greatest Kid’s last day of school is only two weeks away, and then we’ll hit the road and head back to the sand and the surf. Then, shortly after, we’ll be back on the football field, and it doesn’t get any better than that.

For the last few weeks, I’ve been contemplating new beginnings and the places they take us, and particularly in the context of several recent conversations I’ve had. Since I began writing this blog, I’ve had the privilege of connecting with so many people, and I’m grateful for everyone who has written and shared their stories with me.

At the beginning of March, I published a post about settling for less than the selfless love we all deserve, and I wrote that our lives can change drastically when we choose to step out of fear and into faith. Shortly after, in an email exchange with Benjamin R. from Louisville, KY, Benjamin said to me, “I had faith, now I just have fear. I’ve been through it too many times. It’s not worth going through again.”

Benjamin’s words weighed heavily on my heart, and they echoed the sentiments I hear so often from so many. It seems so many of us are heartbroken, and we’ve lost the desire and the willingness to trust and feel love again.

I was pondering Benjamin’s words last month when Dr. Brene Brown aired a special on Netflix called The Call to Courage. Brown is a research professor who studies shame, courage, and vulnerability.

One of the things I appreciate about Brene Brown is her ability to address subjects so many of us shy away from. It isn’t easy to guide people into an understanding of what it means to be courageous or the willingness to be vulnerable. Shame, rejection, and fear of failure are hard topics, especially for those who feel heartbroken or disillusioned.

Yet the ability to step out of fear and into faith requires us to act with courage. We’ve all heard it said that courage is not a lack of fear. It’s the decision to move forward despite our fear. But courage, unfortunately, is not something we simply possess. There is no Wizard of Oz hiding behind the curtain who will hand us a medal and tell us now we’re ready to be brave.

As Brown puts it, courage is a choice. It’s a choice we make to do something while knowing it is very possible, maybe even likely, we will fail. And to do this, to make this choice and to risk failure, we must be willing to be vulnerable.

And there’s the rub.

For most of us, the last thing we want is to allow ourself to be vulnerable, especially after our heart has been broken. But courage and vulnerability go together. I like that Brown explains vulnerability as “having the courage to show up when you can’t control the outcome, when you feel uncertain, at risk, or emotionally exposed”. You cannot be brave with your life without allowing yourself to be vulnerable.

Personal relationships, I think, are the one area in our lives where we protect ourselves the most and where so many of us are least willing to be vulnerable. Pouring our heart out to someone feels like giving them the upper hand and opens us up to all the things we fear the most.

But even though we fear it, I think, deep down, transparency is what we desire more than anything. Underneath the pain and the fear, what we want is to be able to express how we feel and to be loved and accepted, and seen, for who we truly are.

That, I believe, is the connection we crave. Yet so many of us shy away from true connection because of the wounds we’ve suffered in the past. We’ve been hurt, and we’re afraid to trust. That is a fear I understand. As someone who often chooses the company of books over people, and after a decade filled with healing and re-connecting with myself, allowing myself to be vulnerable with others is not something that comes easily.

But what, I wonder, is the alternative? Do we simply give up? Do we let our pain and our fear keep us from what we desire the most?

I can’t imagine anything more painful than getting to the end of our days and realizing no one in our life ever knew us for who we really are, that we never deeply connected with another human being because we were afraid, or that we shut ourself off from giving and feeling love because our heart had been broken.

Connection is the one thing we crave the most, but in our unwillingness to be vulnerable and to risk being hurt, it becomes the thing we shy away from most often.

And it’s the place where we make ourselves the most inaccessible. I’m guilty of this in so many ways. There are very few people I’ve allowed myself to be vulnerable with. But while it is something I fear, I am more afraid of regret, of looking back at my life and realizing I stood on the sidelines, that I didn’t live the life I wanted, or that I shied away from love out of fear.

I believe love is where we protect ourselves the most. It’s where we put up our armor, where we make the most excuses, and it’s where we quiet the voice inside our head and settle for less than we deserve. It’s where so many of us get stuck and choose comfort over courage. Because comfort is easy, and courage is not.

As Brown puts it, when we turn away from vulnerability and choose comfort over courage in an attempt to numb ourselves from pain, we are also numbing ourselves from joy.

So often, we avoid love and the happiness it brings because we fear the pain. This, I believe, is when we find ourselves slipping into ambivalence. When we ignore our feelings of discontent and replace “what would really make me happy is…” with “I’m fine,” we are numbing, and we’re avoiding and using comfort to deny what we truly feel and desire. And we’re not being our true and authentic selves.

It’s a terrifying thought, but true and authentic love and connection require us to be our true and authentic selves. We cannot expect to be loved for who we are if we do not allow ourselves to be seen.

Maybe our willingness to be vulnerable is the greatest gift we can give ourselves. And maybe accepting others and allowing them to be truly authentic and vulnerable without guilt, imposing our own agenda, or passing judgment is the greatest gift we can give to one another.

And maybe it’s too easy to stand on the sidelines. Maybe living our greatest life means being brave and willing to fail. Failure is, after all, how we grow. It’s hard, and it’s painful. But I think I would rather live my life feeling too much than to spend my days protecting myself from feeling anything at all.

Stepping out of fear and into faith requires us to be courageous with our life and with love. It means we need to be willing to be vulnerable even after our heart has been broken. It isn’t easy. But what if the reward is true and authentic love and connection, to be loved and accepted, not for what we do or who we’re supposed to be, or what we can provide, but simply for who we are? That, I believe, is the greatest love. It’s the love we all deserve.

And that is something worth being brave for.

M.C. Greene

Thank you, Benjamin R., for your honesty and your empathy and for allowing me to share your words. Yes, I do truly believe it’s worth it.

Dr. Brene Brown’s special The Call To Courage is available on Netflix. It’s heartfelt and honest and eye-opening. Give it a gander.

(This lovely photo was taken by Elya Vatel)

P.S. Do We Accept The Love We Think We Deserve?