The Paradox of Bravery

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Everything of the world,

logic, pragmatism screams white

and a small knowing deep inside,

under thick layers and layers of doubt

whispers black.

Between this black and white lies the

threshold humans call bravery.

Before this threshold is safety.

Beyond it is purpose.

Before it is sanity.

Beyond is ecstasy.

Before is good enough.

Beyond is bespoke love.

And while people say to me, you are brave

as they make sense of my choices,

there is something they do not see.

The part of me that bears the cost.

The toll of bravery. Pain.

You see those who get good at dancing

at the threshold of bravery will tell you

the getting good comes from

learning to dance at our own threshold of pain.

We learn to stitch our insides with trust.

Shield ourselves with surrender

stand up wounded,

and limp across that threshold, at will

facing the sword of the unknown

again and again and again.

And let me tell ya - the unknown

is not a lousy motherfucking swordsman.

Oh, how I have dreaded the pain.

More often than daily I have despised the unknown

for its savage proof on my body-heart.

Somedays I cussed at purpose,

showing surrender the finger.

Famished, I clung to any love near enough,

ignoring the quest of the truest kind.

And yet with time,

I end up dancing at the threshold of bravery.

Like a choiceless choice.

Nothing else satiates those who

even if just once drunk from the lips of true aliveness,

and I have bathed it in.

To be brave then is

to give up the delusion of ‘all good things’.

To be brave is to be relentless in our devotion only to aliveness.

To put it less crudely -

To be brave is to trust pain to shackle your limbs down for a genital throbbing pounding

and moaning Hallelujah while squirting aliveness over organic cotton sheets.