It’s Hard to be Brave…Part One
As I wake our children up before work, before writing,
before training and before their school, it’s hard to be brave. I’ve learned in
life most people aren’t brave. I learned
it early in life, and I’ve learned why it is hard to be brave. I knew it
instinctively. As if I were born to reckon with it. I can recall the very first
memory of visual fear, it was on a sunny, summer, late afternoon July 1966. I
wasn’t quite four years old yet, but I had a sudden sense of fear. I looked on
as two of my family members in front of another family member who appeared to
have no fear presented an act he thought was presenting bravery. Yet, his act was nearing a point of bullying.
And to anyone else, it may not have been seen this way. But I knew it even at
that young age. As I recall this particular day then; I realize his appearance
of bravery arrived out of thinking he had control. And if he didn’t have control, he controlled
others with his fear. His bullying appeared as if it were bravery. Now speaking
my mind, I’ll move forward into current events of today.
As perhaps I may turn the tables on you, the reader.
Yesterday my husband and I stood in our kitchen together. I stood there, coffee in hand contemplating
the meals I would begin to start cooking for the week ahead. Naturally, in our
kitchen we privately touch upon political goings on. But you see, they aren’t
the local ones regularly; once in a while the state politics. But of course,
the national politics come to light swiftly. However, even just as important
are the politics and human beings living in the world today. That is what I bring up and contemplate along
with other thoughts throughout the day in my car alone, inbetween work,
training, children, and well there, is always a political world edge in my fiction
books.
As I commented yesterday to my husband, “These people just
don’t get it. So, you’re in Honduras, you want to escape domestic violence,
gang violence, government corruption withholding your freedoms. You want your kids to have it better. So now, you’ve got to put in a request for asylum
in Mexico, then be turned down by the Mexican government. You know what’s going
on. You now know that the cartels know who you are. Basically, mostly, you’re screwed, and so,
are your children. You’re in Hong Kong, you’ve have had basic freedoms over the
decades. But wait, now it’s being diminished. It’s like rapid fire. The greed
of the world has thrown you into this abyss, and people find fault because with
the protests as they have become violent. Yet, some of those finding fault aren’t
even there. The fault finders never
visited Hong Kong, let alone followed it’s politics, nor have they read up on
how Hong Kong’s political situation actually came to be. Yet they criticize as young people protest
risking the likelihood that they will be imprisoned or worse yet, murdered. Then
in some countries, mutaa marriage, also known as a ‘marriage of
convenience’. Convenience to the men of course, some wanting to marry girls
as young as age thirteen or even age nine. Going on further, the sex-trafficking
which we’ve helped in our country aid and abet. The answer is greed and
corruption. I see people on social media post something that they haven’t even
read the date, let alone the first two sentences of the article they are
posting. So, it appears that they aren’t the type of people to think globally.”
I know the truth is hard to swallow. Because you must be brave to swallow the
truth, learn it, know it and face it. It’s
hard to be brave.---Jody-Lynn Reicher
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