Yet Untitled 092 - See them
My Core Community of Courageous Comrades
Dearest YUer,
First, my sincere apologies for that alliteration in the byline. I. Could. Not. Resist. 🤣
I’ve written about my obsession with bravery before. Those of you who have been here for a while know that many of my instalments dance around the themes of bravery or courage. Perhaps it’s because I’m trapped in the belief that courage is always in short supply for me.
Belief. That’s another theme my instalments circle.
As this instalment reveals itself, I realise that I’m circling both courage and belief in tandem.
I find bravery fascinating. I always marvel at how irrational it feels sometimes - in the face of a world that so full of fear, a world that often feels plummeting towards defeat, or in the face of personal situations where I feel I’ve already lost while they’re still in play.
Yet, bravery exists. Not just in one person, but many. Not just in other people, but also in me. Buddhism goes even further to argue that no entity of life is devoid of it. I believe it in theory. I often am lost in practice.
When I was younger, one of the highlights of the Indian Republic Day parade (the recurring televised event of my childhood) used to be the bunch of kids who had been awarded for their bravery. They were usually riding on an elephant, and I found myself looking for distinguishing features - some difference in countenance that marked their bravery - but I was always struck by how ordinary these kids were - how much like me! As they lumbered past, waving brightly to the camera and to the gathered crowds on Rajpath from their elephant, a commentator related in praising tones how someone had thwarted a robbery, how another had rescued a drowning person from a river and other extraordinary things like that. Ordinary kids. Exceptional behaviour.
I think I’m drawn to brave people. I think I’m drawn to them because a part of me wants to believe that bravery isn’t extra-ordinary, but accessible to us all. I encounter a recurring theme in my Buddhist practice - that we humans yearn to awaken to a stronger, more courageous part of ourselves. Buddhism also recognises that we can, but first we have to believe that courage is already a part of our lives.
There have been times when such belief has operated in my life at crucial moments. There have been times when it hasn’t. However, the magnetism I feel towards narratives of bravery conveys clearly to me how I’d like this balance sheet to look.
A Courageous Core Congregation
(Couldn’t resist again!)
I’ve been listening to a really amazing podcast by the Six-Grammys-at-29 musician Jacob Collier where he talks about his audience, especially the people who really listen to him - the ones who he feels are invested in his journey. He says something to the effect that core groups such as these, perhaps comprising of 10% of an artist’s followership, sometimes contribute almost the entirety of their revenue on platforms like Patreon.
When I hear this, I started thinking of you dear Yet Untitler; how you and your tribe of 350 or so readers feel like such a core group in my life. The support you offer me is invaluable. Because of you, I feel seen.
‘Feeling seen’ is something Jacob spoke about in this podcast. Perhaps I’ll write about ‘Being Seen’ in greater detail another week. Today, I’m turning the concept around on its head a bit. I want to talk to you about another core group in my life - a core group of brave people. It feels like I’ve collected them, and I feel strongly that they should be seen. In a way, this is me placing them on an elephant and parading them before you. Why? I don’t know yet, but I’m sure I’ll know a few paragraphs down.
Recently, I attended at an intimate gathering in which mountaineer Anurag Maloo related his impossible story of surviving 3 days in a crevasse while descending Annapurna. Anurag’s rescue had been a massive mobilisation of people around the world. A vast, extended community of people joined in the rescue effort - even if just to pray.
Meeting Anurag recently got me thinking about bravery and I found that I’m not the only person who’s drawn to brave people. I listened to him in a room full of such kindred spirits brought there via the same draw. At the gathering, someone in the audience said something that resonated deeply - they said that in not losing hope for Anurag, they felt as if they were solidifying hope in their own lives. For them, getting Anurag out of that hole - was to pull themselves out of their own holes.
From her words, I conjectured that the lady who asked the question was seeking transformation, perhaps towards bravery. But, thinking about it, there are stories of bravery all around. There’s David who slew the Goliath; there’s Gandhiji who gained India independence; there’s Arjun of the Pandavs, who asked pertinent questions about life and death, and then won a war. I know all these stories. Why don't they suffice? Why did we all need to come see Anurag so urgently that day?
Jacob Collier said something else in that podcast of his that struck me. He spoke out against the label of ‘Genius’, something he’s called very often. He said that it’s not a good term, because it calling someone a genius places them ‘way high up in the sky’ and that ‘there’s no bridge to someone like that’. Collier would much rather be recognised as someone who ‘may have this big life inside’ but is also just as flawed as anyone else. Hmm. Bridge.
Someone said of Anurag when I showed them his photograph -
“He looks like someone who I went to college with.”
Bridge.
Perhaps even David may look like someone I went to college with if I spent time with him in the same room where he spoke to me not from a lectern but from the same level as me. It’s possible (I did know some very handsome people in college). I’ve never had the opportunity to talk across a table to Arjun of the Pandavas about his experience of looking War in the face. I’ve only been sung to about his heroic persona, and there’s no bridge there.
Which is why I feel the need to declare this. Brave people need to be seen. A certain kind of brave person I’m drawn to wants to be seen not as a hero but as ordinary. This I feel is one of the ultimate acts of humanity in my book and probably the reason why I find myself moving heaven and earth to encounter such lives and engage with them as often and as much as possible.
Also - I find that I cannot keep them to myself. Over the next week after meeting Anurag, I found myself transmitting his life experiences in almost every conversation I had. Here I am writing about him.
I sincerely, deeply - no bullshit - believe that life wants us to be brave, more so now than ever. Bravery performs miracles. I feel it’s the currency to access the wonders of life in as much the sense that fear is the currency that blinds us from them. Some of the things I heard Anurag say about Annapurna - the mountain that engulfed him - were truly wondrous and sometimes other-worldly. But his eyes - though full of laughter and unfiltered joy - were ordinary eyes. The eyes possessed by people we went to college with.
When I think of Joshua Coombs, my friend who walks the streets of the world’s cities looking for homeless people - who he gives haircuts to - I feel a similar resonance. Fighting nobly against his own inner struggles, Joshua keeps up an extraordinary life gifting dignity in obvious places where it’s needed but seldom afforded.
When I think of Gurmeher Kaur, my friend who stood up against patriarchal political organisations and against war, I see simultaneously someone who inspires awe in my heart, yet battles the same questions of identity and uncertainty I faced up to in my own life in the past.
When I think of my fellow Substacker Cali Bird, who keeps plodding gently on her creative journey with admirable honesty and transparency in the face of huge personal setbacks, I feel fortunate to know her.
When I think of Alankrita, my friend who simply continues to meet me and be a friend no matter what persecutions she may be facing, I realise that she set me on a quest to try and become that person myself.
When I think of my friend Shonali Bose, who does a dance to Gimmie Hope Jo Anna in the face of any potentially fearful situation, successfully dispelling fear as if it had never been there in the first place, I can feel myself becoming braver with each passing day that I know her.
There are many more. I love you all.
And of course - when I think of the part of me who is brave - I feel that I shortchange myself every time I spend time away from this person. It takes a village - the village I’ve described above - to keep me connected to that guy.
While writing this instalment, I free-flowed a bit and while some of it doesn’t feel coherent, I like this particular paragraph that came through, which I’ll reproduce as is:
Bravery isn’t something you possess like a tool. It is an expression. A particular way to wear your life - with its collars up. It’s a way in which you choose to wear your hair. It’s a way in which you choose to riff off the world.
Thanks for listening.
Lots of love
V
PS - do you have a particular understanding/insight/interpretation of bravery and it’s part in your life that you’d like to share?
Hit me up with a comment!
PPS: Since it’s Dune season, I also thought it appropriate to reproduce my favourite Frank Herbert Quote from the Dune books, reproduced in the films:
"I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain."
Bravery for me lately has been all about being comfortable of the unknown. It reminds me of the film - Dumb Money wherein the protagonist of the film is reminded by his brother that what's done is done and now the only option he had was run naked through the light. You've beautifully put together the feeling of being seen with bravery because while one is a desire, it needs the momentum of bravery, courage and most of all - trust in oneself.
Dear Vasant,
I love your writing for its raw grit and honesty. It takes courage to make yourself vulnerable and I always feel thankful for what I read from you as I find comfort in your words. You talk about things I often think about and yet never get to voice.
While I read this particular piece I could not help but read your words by substituting 'bravery' with 'courage'. It felt more accessible to me that way. For bravery is put on a pedestal and I care too little about heights.
I see courage in littler things - people who struggle to face the day but wake up and do little things when that seems as hard to them as climbing a cold hard mountain seems to me. Or for some who struggle to apologise but do.
It is something we must all conjure up from time to time and life forces us to find it in the most trying circumstances.
When I look back at my own life I am very often unable to see my own courage. Friends and family help me see it. And then I look back in awe of how little I recognise it in myself.
Perhaps it is courage that needs to be seen and we are just incidental :)
Warmly,
Smriti