Dear Reader:

Holy crap, it is cold outside.  And, inside.  And, everywhere.  And, I'm living in VA - not in WI or MN like some of my friends.   So, thanks again, winter.  COLD AND DARK.

Let me get the stats out of the way, because I've got some stuff on my mind tonight....

Total calories consumed:  1616
Total calories burned:  265 (45 minutes on the treadmill - I cannot stop listening to the "Wailin' Jennys" version of "Looking for a Deeper Well."  Totally OBSESSED with that song.)

Breakfast:  egg, toast, butter, coffee, milk  - the usual
Mid-morning snack:  pack of PB crackers

Lunch with friend:  BLT salad.  Here it is.

Here's what was left on the plate at the end:

Dinner:

Dessert:

So, I want to talk about bravery.  I used to think that bravery was something that people like my brother had - he is doctor and special forces trained soldier in the Army and is used to jumping out of airplanes, is trained for combat, and regularly did things like climb Mt. Kilimanjaro.    That is certainly a form of bravery, involving physical risk, etc.  By these standards, I am not a very brave person.   And, I also felt (throughout my experiences in undergraduate and graduate school) that people who were confident about their abilities and spoke up in class were brave.   

But, these days I'm realizing that bravery can be any situation in which a person sits beside or along with fear and continues to act according to their own sense of integrity.   So, bravery can be saying "I love you" without knowing what the response will be.   It might be continuing to show up to a relationship that has experienced betrayal or pain.   It might be leaving a relationship that has experienced betrayal or pain to be able to live wholeheartedly again.   It might be sitting alone in a room and admitting something about one's self to one's self.  It might be admitting something about one's self to someone else.   It might be not trying to do anything at all.

I have not always known that making music requires bravery, but I certainly do now.   I had a wonderful teacher in my undergraduate days that opened the door of self-expression at the piano for me.  Prior to that point, I had a wonderful technical background and was pretty good at playing pretty much anything that was put in front of me.  But, I only learned to find my own expressive voice and take musical/emotional risks in performance during these early college years.   I doubt that I would have continued in a career in music had it not been for this teacher.   She was and is a mentor to me in every sense of the word.  And, she is currently facing an extremely difficult health challenge.   I am trying to figure out how to best travel alongside her during this journey.   But, I will tell you this.  This woman is brave.   I admire such bravery in people.   And, I see it every day, really.   People are brave all the time in quiet and small ways.   I think of this journey that I'm on right now - that I'm detailing in this blog - as one that requires bravery.   To believe myself worth this effort requires bravery from me.   Some people are brave simply by getting up out of bed and continuing to show up to life.   I am in awe of the amount of bravery I see.  

I just read an article about a book written in the 70's called "The Wisdom of Insecurity" by Alan Watts.   Here's a quote from that book which I loved that encapsulates the necessity of bravery in the face of uncertainty:

There is a contradiction in wanting to be perfectly secure in a universe whose very nature is momentariness and fluidity. But the contradiction lies a little deeper than the mere conflict between the desire for security and the fact of change. If I want to be secure, that is, protected from the flux of life, I am wanting to be separate from life. Yet it is this very sense of separateness which makes me feel insecure. To be secure means to isolate and fortify the “I,” but it is just the feeling of being an isolated “I” which makes me feel lonely and afraid. In other words, the more security I can get, the more I shall want.

To put it still more plainly: the desire for security and the feeling of insecurity are the same thing. To hold your breath is to lose your breath. A society based on the quest for security is nothing but a breath-retention contest in which everyone is as taut as a drum and as purple as a beet.

So, to protect oneself from life, one must be separate from it and from others. That's not a deal I want to make.  

I remember shortly after the arrival of my children, I thought to myself - well, I've just used up my lifetime allotment of bravery in creating my own family in this non-traditional way.   Seriously, it was exhausting just to make the decision, and go through a year of economic/medical uncertainty and 9 months of pregnancy.    I thought to myself - no one really needs to ever ask me to be brave again.  But, of course, I am asked to be brave on a daily basis.    Sometimes, I rise to the occasion and sometimes I don't.   Luckily, there's always a chance to try it again.   Sometimes, I will tell you, bravery hurts.  A lot.  But, I think it is worth it.   Because sometimes, just sometimes, bravery will take you places you've never been before and show you things that are incredibly beautiful.

So, let's all try to be brave tomorrow, OK, dear reader?   And, if we can't quite make it happen tomorrow, let's try the next day.   I don't know why I wanted to spew all of this out tonight, but there you go.   Maybe there are a couple of useful things here.   

Thanks for reading.