Transcript

I’m Major Jackson and this is The Slowdown.

I’m not sure anymore what counts as bravery in everyday life. To some, waking every morning and settling into one’s routine has the veneer of valor. But bravery is often involuntary and situational, like the men who stepped in to protect two women on a city bus in Oregon from harassment by a white supremacist. For others, bravery is a mindset of fearlessness in all aspects of one’s life, with the backdrop being conventionality, where one proceeds to crush expected outcomes.

I live in that between space of Play it safe and Go for it. I mostly proceed with caution but then again, foolishly, I brave activities that put life and limb at risk, like jumping off a cliff into an unknown depth of water. Literally and figuratively. I’ve never jumped out of an airplane, and I probably would be that guy who’d need to be pushed into a skydive. But I see writing poetry as equally not for the faint of heart.

On occasion, writing poetry requires a level of courage to say what most people might think but are afraid to say out loud. Some call this truth-telling. The pursuit of the unsayable has given us memorable lines in poetry and released us from debilitating silence around topics which we fear; an outcome of shame, exposure, and isolation.

When I wrote about my mother’s addiction, I was cautioned by a friend not to play into stereotypes; it was my first brush with respectability politics, as if I needed that! I was afraid of losing my friend’s regard and admiration, which is an anxiety I generally suffer. Over the years, I’ve found courage in the example and light of poets who’ve spoken candidly about nearly unbearable experiences.

Today’s poem finds a symbol of bravery in nature, and teaches us that choosing to act—and facing our dangers—is a matter of persistence we must cultivate in order to grow beyond our fears.

To be brave, I look to the daffodil
by Susan Nguyen

To be brave, I look to the daffodil.
A stupid flower, I’ve always thought – too eager
to enter a world not fully thawed. Shrinking 
after just one cold night. I surround myself with pluck.
Always one for adventure: running naked 
across campus into a stranger’s car as rite of passage,
jumping into the freezing bay. Hitchhiking home but
afraid to speak in class. To order in my mother’s
tongue, my mother’s food. I let the dark take on its own
shapes, unchecked. No, I am not brave, but I like the people
who are. Who never overprepare or let their anxieties 
stop them. For whom things always work out. 
I’m chasing the high from one novelty to another,
wanting adventure but so unwilling to find it on my own.
Instead, I lose myself in people who live unafraid.
Bravery by osmosis. This might be the truest thing
I say today and it scares me. To admit that on my own,
I was never wild. All this time I thought the daffodil’s dropped 
petals, the green leaves that remained, marked an ending. 
But underground she is rebuilding for next spring. 
For when she’ll dare, again, to push through the frostbitten
earth. Year after year, it goes on like this.

"To be brave, I look to the daffodil" by Susan Nguyen. Used by permission of the poet.