Apparently, back in the Ancient Times of the 1960s people used to make new friends by asking each other what their sign was. In the New Times of 2020, we can simply replace “sign” with “Enneagram Number.” If you are unfamiliar with this phrase, it is a personality typing system. Think Meyers-Briggs but smarter. With cute shoes.
Once you drink the Enneagram Kool-Aid, you cannot stop thinking about your number and what it all means and how it explains the fact that your eighth-grade Algebra teacher’s comments about your weight never left your brain. The Ennegram Experts, and there are many, tell you not to attempt figuring out someone else’s number. So of course you will immediately begin determining the numbers of everyone in your vicinity. My number is apparently a Four, which means I am deep and tortured and sensitive and I long to be special. It makes so much sense now that, when I watched Mary Lou Retton vault to gold or Julia Roberts weep through her Oscar acceptance speech or when I read the accounts of Medal of Honor recipients, I was sure I was not living up to my imagined potential. I was living a very ordinary life.
The truth is, few of us will have a brief, shining moment of glory or bravery.
Instead, for most of us, bravery holds hands with monotony.
It is brave to parent, to have the difficult but necessary talks with your teens. To be a soft place to land, to not overreact, so that they know they can come back to you, again and again.
It is brave to be a caregiver, to meet the same basic human needs, day after day, over and over, for someone who no longer can meet those needs for themselves.
It is brave to be a worker, to go to a job each day, to do what must be done without being noticed or fussed over or paraded about.
It is brave to put beauty and creativity into the world, to bring light where it is so desperately needed, to be vulnerable with your soul’s work.
It is brave to study, to keep learning so you can improve a world that oftentimes seems to reject that very improvement.
It is brave to put down roots in relationships, to have hard conversations, to refuse to quit on another human.
It is just as brave to walk away when staying will kill your soul.
It is brave to grow things: flowers and tomatoes and chickens and sheep. It is brave to celebrate life in a world where loving a living thing is a precarious place to put your heart.
It is brave to do what you love: to draw, to dance, to design. It is brave to do what others say doesn’t pay, doesn’t help you make a living. Making a living is important; so is making your soul sing.
It is brave to embrace the glorious ordinary that is your day...not to deny it, but to practice the art of acceptance: This is your ordinary life. You are doing extraordinary things simply by living it well.
