Living up to Sitting Bull's Virtues (bravery)

As a child, I was fortunate enough to have access to my Aunt Dolores' amazing collection of books. Her room, the entire upstairs of my grandmother's house, which at one time housed seven children, seemed to overflow with books on just about every subject. Aunt Dolores' background involved helping people and always focusing on their positive aspects, rather than their weaknesses. A former history teacher who was working for Chicago Catholic Charities during my youth, I believe Dolores played a major part in guiding me towards the study of history and work in the field. That loving and determined aunt of mine also focused on making me proud of my unique characteristics, rather than focusing on the disruptiveness of my behaviors as much of my family did. She always seemed to choose the right book to peak my interest, and as a boy she had me read lots of books on cowboys and Indians.

To just about everybody in my family's surprise, I always showed more of an interest in Native Americans way of life and seemed to always want them to win their battles against the white regime. Deep in one of my mom's photo albums, there is even a picture of me in grandma's house wearing an Indian head dress. I'm not sure if it was this connection to Native American thought, or just some random part of my personality, but much of my adult life has been spent moving to less-populated locations so that I can enjoy all the nature around me. My life began in a city of more than 3 million people, now I live at the base of the foothills to the Boise Mountains in a state with slightly more than a million people.

A couple of weeks ago, I visited a friend named Chris, who has played a similar roles to my Aunt Dolores throughout my adult life. He's encouraged me to stay on top of modern music and literature and to push my physical limits in nature. Whether it was mountain biking the 25 miles of the Fisher-Williams loop or backpacking through Hell's Roaring Canyon, Chris has made me realize that this fat ass can still accomplish any physical task I set my mind to, as long as I keep trying and don't worry about failed attempts. Chris led me on my first summit of Bogus Basis on a road bike (about an 18 mile climb with roughly 4,000 ft of elevation gain). Sure he had to swoop back several times and offer me encouragement to continue, but he stayed with me and celebrated at the top of the mountain with me.

While visiting Chris, I asked if he had any good books to lend me. With all the free-time I have recovering from brain surgery after brain surgery, a good book can make a world of difference to help pass the day and to encourage self reflection. The book that he recommended was The Lance & the Shield: The Life and Times of Sitting Bull by Robert M. Utely. It discussed the four virtues of Sioux life and therefore, Sitting Bull's life. This made me ponder the job I've been doing in my life to exhibit these virtues: bravery, fortitude, generosity, and wisdom. There's no doubt that I'll never exhibit these virtues in the way that Sitting Bull did, but I thought it would be interesting to look at my accomplishments and failures for each virtue.

Bravery is a hard concept to wrap your mind around. What may seem like being brave in a particular situation to one person, may seem like foolishness to another. Being truly brave seems to require situations to present the opportunity to show disregard for yourself in order to help another or change a negative circumstance. A person can also be brave in certain situations, for example fighting to defend someone's honor, but show fear in other situations that require a different type of bravery, such as pushing one's mind to its utmost limits.

For me, I seem to exhibit bravery the most when it involves the safety of others, especially people I love. Being a big strong man, trained in the art of combat, I've had to control my urge to strike out in situations where my friends are being wronged while at the same time I've had to know when it was time to intervene. For example, while in college, my roommate, Jeff, and I were visiting some friends at Illinois State University. At the party, a brawl broke out that I wasn't directly involved in at first, at least not until I saw a huge dude strangling Jeff from behind. Instantaneously, I ran towards the two connecting with the huge dude's face with an elbow to the head. He was knocked out instantaneously, and Jeff was safe. Once he was safe, just about all of my bravery left my body when the huge dude started regaining consciousness. It was at that time that Jeff and I hopped the backyard fence and got the hell out of there. Were my actions brave of cowardly? It's hard to tell, maybe they were a little of both. Would it have been brave to stay and continue to confront the big dude or would that have just been foolish pride? I guess I'll never know.

Another incident of bravery involved my buddy John (Chris's brother) and I swimming in a river at Pedernales Falls State Park in the Texas Hill Country. The river was at flood stage as we hung out at a big rock in the middle of the river that was surrounded by rapids. After a while of being out there, three unsupervised children, the oldest who had to be around 12 and the youngest around 6, showed up to swim off of the rock. After a short while, the older boy of the group screamed that his little brother was drowning. At that moment, I immediate left the safety of the rock, swam through the rapids, and swam him back to safety, the whole time struggling against the rapids. Both John and I were amazed at how brave I had been. John, who doesn't hand out complements to just anyone frequently tells people the story of what I did with a feeling that shows how proud he is to be my friend. But did my actions really exhibit bravery or were they simply instinct?

Seems like a weird question, but on that same swimming trip, my dog, Indie, who was large and powerful, and whose father was an air-sea-rescue dog made me question my own bravery. As John and I hung out in the river, I pretended that I was having difficulty negotiating the rapids, like I might drown. At that moment, good ole' Indie sprang into action, jumping into the river and swimming towards me to offer help. As he came nearby, I grabbed hold of his collar, and Indie slowly swam my nearly 300 lb. body to the shore. I give Indie credit for being brave, but knowing his lineage, some of his actions had to be instinctual.

This physical bravery that I've shown can also be seen in a wide variety of activities that I've participated in, such as wrestling, playing rugby, mountain biking, rock climbing (a few times), and backpacking deep into the wilderness. However, there are aspects of my life that have shown cowardice. Throughout my academic career, I have always been toward the top of my class and have been encouraged to push my brain as far as I've pushed my body. It's easy to see that at some points, I've done this, especially in my professional career. Being a teacher and a textbook editor requires that you believe enough in your ability to perform such work that you know you aren't hurting students' education. I've even taken leadership roles in these positions to fight for policies and procedures that I knew were better or more justified.

At times I've allowed my fear of not measuring up to others intellectually affect major life decisions. For example, in choosing a college to attend, I had the grades and test scores to get into many excellent colleges. However, my fear of not being the big fish in the pond and of having to assume huge college loan debts led me to choose Northern Illinois University. Not that it was a bad school, Northern just wasn't the Harvard of the Midwest. Who knows how my life's opportunities could have changed if I worked hard enough to attend the best school that I could.

Another example involves my fear of challenging my mind against the best out there in law school. Throughout my undergraduate course work, I planned on attending law school after obtaining my degree. However, as the end of college I decided to give teaching a try, thus bypassing the opportunity to be a lawyer. Several years after graduation, I took the Law School Aptitude Test and did very well. My scores were good enough to get me into a ton of law schools, however, I passed up the opportunity to move to Austin, TX, and to become a textbook editor.

Do these stories show a lack of bravery in relying on my own intelligence to become the most that I could be, or do these moves just show my wide range of interests and abilities? I'm not sure, but I wish I could find out what Sitting Bull would think. I'll look at the remaining Sioux virtues of fortitude, generosity, and wisdom in my next few blogs.