The bravest are surely those

Liana Banana is in the hospital. It's nothing unexpected, just that her MS has flared up and her new doctor won't let her take the IV steroids at home like the old doc did. So for a few days, she's stuck with on the old folks ward of the hospital. Luckily, she downloaded Sonic the Hedghog to her cell phone. She writes about going into the hospital on her own blog. Specifically, she talks about her fear of staying in the hospital, and what it represents in terms of her disease.

She mentions in passing that she is not brave and this got me thinking in general about what bravery really is. I don't think bravery is the absence of hissy fits, the absence of crying, or freaking out. No, to me bravery is doing all of those things, and then doing the scary thing anyway. My mom was always scared of flying. She would start having a slow build panic meltdown a few days before we would fly, and it would culminate at take off, where she would sit in her seat, eyes tightly shut, forcing herself not to streak off the plane. The alternative would have been to never go to Morocco or Turkey or Russia or Ireland - she could have done that. Lord knows she loved Canada enough that she never had to get on a plane to take a trip. But she sucked it up and did it because she wanted to see those places.

Liana, unlike my mother, doesn't have a fun trip to look forward to when she gets through the scary part of being in the hospital. She has to deal with all the crap that goes along with being in IV 'roids. And on top of all that, she has the memory of what life was like before all this. And even though it would be understandable if she went to bed and pulled the covers over her head, with a smidge of cajoling from her family and her boyfriend, she came out and did what had to be done.

Thucydides said, "The bravest are surely those who have the clearest vision of what is before them, glory and danger alike, and yet notwithstanding, go out to meet it." Liana, I am very proud of you, not only for having the clearest vision of what lies ahead, but for going out to meet it as best and with as much grace and dignity as you can. That is bravery.