Being Brave in 2021

“Kindness, kindness, kindness.
I want to make a New year's prayer, not a resolution. I'm praying for courage.”

Susan Sontag

The very first day of the new year, I ate sourdough apple-cinnamon waffles with one of my dearest friends, she who is in so many ways a mirror image of myself. As much as I am a person of moderation and observation, carefully weighing options and consequences, my friend is a person of action, instant conviction, wholes-not-halves, and spontaneity.

After we finished our waffles, she looked at me and said, “I know what we should do today-we should paint your bathroom wall black.”

Mirror images indeed, we are both highly attuned and sensitive to our aesthetic surroundings, and we both prefer a space that is lighter and brighter, with a sense of freshness and cheer and sunlight; I have not painted any surface in my home anything but “Polar Bear” white in the last seven years. But this year, and perhaps as we age, we were both craving something with a bit more depth and darkness in our homes, as in our lives.

I had thought often about painting the very wall she suggested painting. I had thought about a color called “Baby Fawn” (which, upon reflection, is a rather redundant name, I think) or perhaps a color called “Jojoba”, a mid tone cool, muted green. I had not thought about black. 

Regardless, I instantly said yes, let’s do it, and had chosen a black paint color after about ten minutes of Pinterest research: “Onyx”, a deep, warm, black jewel tone. 

I chose from my gut, and I felt…brave. I felt like I was laughing fearlessly at the future, even if it was just at the future of the accent wall in my bathroom.

I find this to be true, however, no matter the stakes. Saying “I love you” to my husband for the first time, putting an offer down on a fixer upper, getting pregnant with our second child-all instinctive, gut level decisions that any amount of over-thinking would have squashed instantly. When I choose from my gut and refuse to overthink, I am at my most brave, and perhaps my most wise.

Last year, plus a few days, I chose a word of the year for the first time ever. I had absolutely no intention of choosing a word. I just woke up one morning and knew I had one; it was a gut level knowledge that I decided not to question. Perhaps influenced by some painful, broken relationships in the last half of 2019, relationships that would require me to sit back and wait instead of pretending my proactive interference might solve unsolvable problems, I knew my word for 2020 would be “patience”.

I’ll allow that to sink in for a moment. 

I chose “patience” as my word for 2020. 

Patience: long-suffering, gracious, faithful waiting. 

I don’t believe in clairvoyance, but I do trust my intuition. Perhaps my intuition, my gut, was putting clues together in a way my conscious mind couldn’t. Perhaps it was just a coincidence, if you believe in coincidence. 

Whatever it was, patience would prove to be essential. I had to practice patience with the leaders of the nation of which I am a citizen and with my fellow citizens as the paper thin walls of our illusory American kingdom crumpled beneath the weight of our own hubris and blindness. I had to practice patience with my family, closer than ever and struggling each in their own way to contort themselves into fitting with entirely different rhythms. I had to practice patience with myself as I wrestled in a mighty match with my own anger and righteousness and judgement and, occasionally, self-pity. I have learned so much about the nuance and complexity of patience in the face of injustice and hate. I have learned and grown both larger and, I hope, more humble. I have learned that patience often requires me to be brave.. perhaps even fearless.

I began considering what my word for 2021 might be a few weeks ago. (Weren’t we all, in our own way, trying to visualize a new year that might bring any kind of resolution, relief, or respite?) As I’ve struggled so much with my own resentment and anger this year, I thought perhaps “tender” would be the ticket. Practicing tenderness for people, attitudes, and circumstances I don’t like is certainly worthwhile. But my gut, when I made space for it, told me something different, and it told me the same thing over and over.

You, lady, are going to need to be brave. Perhaps even fearless. 

The thing is, I really, really don’t want to be brave. I want to be comfortable. My mind wants me to choose tenderness: softness with myself and others. I want a light, bright, cotton flannel world where we are all swaddled and safe and surrounded by sun, and I want to live out my part in creating that world. My gut, however, wants me to prepare for the need to get a little gritty, to somehow find solace and comfort in the deep and the dark.

I am choosing to trust my gut. I am choosing to pursue courage. What that will mean, I have yet to find out. I hope and pray I can be brave enough to find out.

As we all look ahead to a changed world, a transitional time between some of the darkest days we’ve shared as a planet in many, many years and possible, partial relief from those days, I do believe that my head has it at least partially right. We will need to be tender with one another, tender with the places and people we call home, including our planet, and tender with ourselves. 

I’m also sure that tenderness cannot be practiced without becoming more brave. It’s going to take setting aside the assumptions we make about one another. Those assumptions-those brackets, boxes, and barriers-make us feel safe and secure. They put us on the side of right and others on the side of wrong, and not just wrong in action or in thought, but wrong in being. I need to be brave enough to sort those assumptions out and discard them, or better yet recycle them into compassion, in order to pursue a courageous kind of tenderness.

I will need to be brave to walk in a new kind of world, deciding how I want to contribute to it and how to give generously of my time and talents. I will need to be brave enough to write, to share, to take the risk that is all entwined with vulnerability. 

I need to be brave enough to hope, and brave enough to trust, and brave enough to speak, and to forgive. 

I will be brave enough to walk through the dark and open my eyes all the wider.

Have you chosen a word of the year for 2021? I’d love to know how that process went for you, and what your word is!