Between Courage and Bravery

Learning from fear and falls

I felt like I’d been hit by a pavement. I came off my bike last week. I was distracted by a minor altercation with a driver, I turned off the road onto a cycle path, the slope was entirely covered with leaves so I didn’t get the line right and I slipped. My front wheel and handlebars did a 180 and I was on the ground. 

Well you know how this goes, the driver sped off despite being stationary at a junction next to me as I lay on the ground, and it was up to a woman with a pushchair to check I was okay. 

Different parts of the story sting at different times. I was furious with myself, I was furious with the driver, then I was grateful to have got off relatively unscathed, then I was just sad. 

It brings up a lot of thoughts, things like that. Really it was nothing, but my reaction to it was massive. It took me hours to come down from the shock. I held it together as I walked my bike the rest of the way to him and then completely fell apart. When I suddenly got very dizzy and nauseous, he drove me to the hospital. I could not stop crying. I wanted my mum and dad. It was just as well there was a two hour wait at the minor injuries unit of the hospital - by the time I was seen, I had managed to pull myself together.

But you see, I’ve never broken a bone. I’m rubbery - contemporary dance taught me how to fall and how to catch myself from falling. And I have not had early, formative experiences of managing any real level of risk, fear and impact. 

I still think a lot about the run I did on my own in the mountains on The Isle of Arran. There were sketchy moments that made me question how on earth dog walkers had made it up there, how these trails were so well worn, how people could be sat idly drinking a flask of tea. I’ve since read books by climbers and walkers who confront the same situations I faced and they are just par for the course. In Anna Fleming’s brilliant book, Time on Rock, she describes trusting her feet to just let slopes of scree take her down. It’s sometimes the quickest route. That’s what I thought when I tried to go down one, but it moved too fast, I got scared, I got scratched up and backtracked. 

I am not yet as brave as I want to be.

I go on relatively big adventures, I swim in cold water, but it’s not without a lot of awareness of the mental and physical strength required to do so. I could be described as courageous, but I don’t think I’m brave.

So where does that leave us? I feel very lucky indeed. My fall could have been a lot worse, and I hope I haven’t jinxed my lifetime of rubbery limbs with this post. Because in spite of a year of slipping around mountains, running into tree branches and flying off my bike, my close calls have been lessons learned and I’m only eager to get back out there. 

I guess maybe that’s bravery. We learn it through courage.