On Bravery

The difference between acting brave and being brave and living bravely.

What does it mean to be brave? It’s not inherent, right? Bravery, or zoongide’ewin, means to live with a strong heart. Often, we are told to act bravely, but rarely are we told to live bravely.

To act bravely is a burst of living outside of ourselves until our spirit chases us back to into our meat vessel. Acting bravely is a temporary expression that cannot sustain itself because it is not where our spirit lives for most of us. We can all act bravely. Living bravely is something different.

Living bravely requires a mix of belief in yourself, your community, and the world around us. It is the belief that you’re going to be okay. You believe this because you’re supposed to be okay.

Living bravely starts as a leap of faith but quickly becomes an exercise in assessing, measuring, developing, and producing vision and action that feeds spirit.

Living bravely necessitates that you believe in yourself every moment, in every decision, and in every step because you are feeding spirit, and if you’re feeding spirit, that is all spirit needs to care for you.

To believe in the power of spirit is a leap of faith for many. It’s in accessible. It’s vague. Impossible. Or at worst, a lie no one can believe.

To honestly believe in spirit involves understanding that you as a spiritual being exist in a massive universe of spirit. You must realize that all that there is is spirit. You must know that spirit is everything and nothing. You must accept this to live in good spirit.

Understanding this will provide you with power and personal responsibility.

My understanding of spirit as an Anishinaabe person alive in the world is that an honouring of spirit means an intentional and gracious and kind way of being that honours the spirit of this place through your offering of your bundle to the whole.

We give to the universe that which we need because we understand that if we do, what we need will be there when we petition for it. This is the essence of spirit, understanding that what goes around comes around. What you give is what you get. This is the core of inakaanaagawiiwin, or, the Anishinaabe understanding of universal law.

Therefore.

Being brave means understanding that what we need is here for us. To be brave it to intentionally engage in the practice of good spirit and deliberately setting your course with your baagijiigaanaan, your bundle, in tow.

Living bravely is an inherent starting point for each of us when we learn to submit to spirit. And, yes, this applies even in the face of colonization, and imperialism, and oppression. The only way to rise out of these systems of oppression is through our understanding of what was meant to care for us, how we were to live before these disruptions.

This is how we must show up daily for ourselves, our loved ones, our family, friends, community, and the world.

To be brave is to be free.