all those difficult things

"We have to be all those difficult things like cheerful and kind and curious and patient, and we've got to study and think and work hard, all of us ..." -Lyra Balacqua/Silvertongue in The Amber Spyglass by Philip Pullman

This morning I was brushing my teeth, and I caught my own eyes in the mirror.

Now, I know I'm not brave, I told myself. Not in any big, grand way that counts. But that doesn't mean I have to be a coward. I can brush my teeth and look myself in the eye and tell myself I'm human. I can go to class every single day. I can pay attention and take notes and not blame anybody else on my own failures, ever. I can feel lucky no matter what life throws at me. I can acknowledge that life is NEVER uncommonly unfair, because unfairness is the most normal part of living.

When it really counts, when a boy in my high school sociology class loudly proclaims that there is no such thing as marital rape or we need to think about how many men's lives are ruined because drunk girls make mistakes and then use the law to blame their mistakes on men, I sit quietly in the back of class and fume to myself, saying nothing. I don't know if, confronted today by the same guy saying the same things, I would confront him for his idiocy or not. I don't think I have that kind of bravery.

But there are little kinds of bravery. What it takes to go to sleep thinking about possibilities and friends rather than deadlines and unfairness. I think I can tackle that kind of bravery.

Also, to answer a running prompt from playwriting: What is your heaven? My heaven is a non-burnt, perfectly brewed light roast coffee with just the right amount of half and half that stays hot (but not too hot) for as long as it takes for me to drink it, every morning, sitting on my desk as I go through my daily to-do lists, homework, and procrastinating.