Afam Ade-Odiache: Bravery is not in the eye of the beholder [NEW VOICES]

I’ve started to think about what bravery is. Everyone knows the rational expectations of the definition of bravery. It’s the soldier in the front lines who puts his life on the line for people he doesn’t know. In a functional society he’s incentivised by decent pay and a life long pension that will go to his family should he kick the bucket. In Nigeria, it is brave to the point of madness to be a soldier.

When I hear that Boko Haram has been ‘technically’ defeated I laugh not because of the attempt to spin a victory out of a situation that is clearly not over, but because I cannot think of why the men that fought those battles actually went through with it. As you can imagine, I am not a patriot. I’m one of the people who purse their lips when President Buhari says something like, “if you have another country to relocate to you are free to do so.” Show me a decent opportunity and I’ll sprint out of here and never look back. Nigeria’s problems are legion. I assume that this is why everyone, politician or not, powerful or weak, religious or atheist looks to God to solve them.

People say I’m brave. I wrote an article about depression once. Instead of saying it very nearly killed a lifelong friend of mine, I was mad enough to say, “Na me get the depression oh!” The comments were lovely. “My brave boy” one enthusiastic reader said. “Such courage” said another in my inbox. It was all a bit surreal, because I could see why they thought it was brave, but from my myopic astigmatic lenses it was anything but.

For the people that read it, it was an acknowledgement of weakness. A retelling of a story that had the potential to help someone avert needless suffering. I was a soldier with a pen and a story saving the suicidal from death by self flagellation. The only problem here was that I didn’t feel particularly strong, and it was a very fine example of oversharing. A thing that I do because I’m emotionally demanding. I expect help from anyone and their bed bug. My inability to solve my issues because I can’t see them clearly leads me to seek ideas from anyone that will give them and that’s dangerous.

Someone once said to me that I should stop putting things in boxes. You know? The piles that the organised mind needs to be functional. It’s how we prioritise. Facing some imagined crisis, I followed this advice. It took three months before I realised that it was a terrible thought from an unstable human-being. That one decision set off a bomb that I’m still dealing with. Sometimes you see yourself dash from pillar to post and you can’t figure out what part of life you’re fucking up at – not without hindsight. Then I’ll hear someone calling me brave for talking about depression and maybe it’s true for them, but it isn’t true for me.

Bravery for me is something more than talking, or writing. It’s finding the balls to make a decision and stick with it. It’s handling your shit with everything that you’ve got. It’s living your truth unflinchingly. It is being diligent in your work regardless of who’s looking. It’s the firm belief that everyday is a new beginning bursting at the seams with opportunity; that there’s a new page at the end of every sunset; that you are never finished; that you’re never done. But even here I’m wrong. Bravery is not in the eye of the beholder.

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