The Bravery of Staying
When I quit my very good corporate job at the ripe old age of 29 to pursue my dreams of going to seminary for graduate school, there was one thing that my coworkers said that surprised me more than anything: you are so brave.
Brave? I thought. I’m not brave. I’m just doing what I have to do.
Back then, it didn’t feel like there was any other option—I knew that my next steps were not in my corporate life. I knew that this was my “calling.” I didn’t necessarily know the destination, but I knew that this was the path to take.
And brave? I was for sure not brave. I had memories of standing on the high dive in swimming lessons, wanting desperately to climb back down the ladder but not being able to because there were other kids in line behind me. Or, at the age of nine taking sailing lessons and being terrified that Jaws was waiting for me—the joke was that I left my fingernail marks in the dock as, each morning, the instructor pushed my little sabot sailboat out into the great unknown.
But now, looking back, I have begun to see what my coworkers were saying. I couldn’t see it then—the path was so clear, perhaps with the clarity (or naïvete) of youth, that it seemed obvious to me. I was far younger than most of my other coworkers.
Close to three decades later, I think I finally understand what they meant—because, if faced with the same decision now, I’m not sure I’d make the “brave” choice.
Not that long ago—just a few years—I began to feel a very similar feeling. A niggle, I call it. A sense that something was not quite right. That something was off. That something was out of alignment.
How could this be? I thought. I had changed my life completely. I had left the corporate world, gone to graduate school, began a career as a freelance writer and photographer, and was now living in Baja—many people’s bucket list dream—riding my horse along the beach at sunset.
In fact, that is where it hit me the hardest. One day, while riding my horse along the beach at sunset, taking a group of people for the ride of their lives, the evening couldn’t have been more perfect. But me? I was pissy and annoyed and irritated.
I had changed everything about my scenery, but in that moment I realized—I had not changed my self.
“I’m going to have to burn it all down again,” I thought.
To be honest, that thought was somewhat appealing—starting over, starting fresh, beginning again. It’s the stuff of Elizabeth Gilbert on the bathroom floor that begins Eat Pray Love. Or Cheryl Strayed, heading off very unprepared but determined, in Wild. It is Bilbo Baggins embarking on an epic quest. The hero’s journey—romantic, adventurous, brave.
But the reality was, the last time I “burned it all down,” I didn’t actually have roots. This time around, I had fruit trees, for one, with some very deep roots. And horses. None of which would be easy to pack into the back of an SUV—not to mention that I had long ago sold the SUV and now drove a tiny, fuel-efficient car that would barely fit a monk’s possessions.
I began to wonder—does brave look different when you have skin in the game? Is this what my coworkers had meant when they saw me as brave? Did they think my walking away was a hard choice?
Back then, I was walking away from a ladder I knew I didn’t want to climb. It was easy, actually. Sure, there was a bit of “what if I stayed and my stock options vested, and…” but the Y2K crash actually made that alternate reality easy to dismiss.
But when that same niggle came back to haunt me for a second time, decades later? Well, the path was not so clear. The choice was not so obvious. The clarity and the bravery of youth were a bit more nuanced.
As I have sat with that wondering, I have begun to realize: sometimes the brave choice isn’t the “burning it all down”—the dramatic exit, the clean break, or starting fresh. Sometimes the bravest thing you can do is stay.
Not out of fear of change or fear of being stuck, but out of a commitment to transform the space you are in—to begin to look at changing not just the scenery, but the self that occupies it. In Buddhism there is a concept called One Seat—that I accidentally began to refer to accidentally as Stay Seat. It is a commitment to stay—not to let the thoughts or distractions move you, but to commit to stay and observe and be present.
Our vitality isn’t always found in a new destination—it is found in how we return to ourselves right where we are.
If you are currently standing on your own “high dive,” trying to discern whether bravery means jumping or staying put, I invite you to join us for our conversation live online this Monday, June 8th at 6pm pacific/9pm eastern. We’ll be diving deep into these themes of agency and creative courage. You can register for free here.
If you’ve found this intriguing and you’d like to go a little further, here are a few ways we can walk together:
✨ Take the Reins: A monthly practice in agency. Join our intimate, hour-long community gatherings to explore how the wisdom of horsemanship can help us navigate modern human challenges. Second Sunday of the month, 10am Pacific.
🌿 The Return: A 10-Week Journey Home: A self-guided audio journey back to the energy, ease, and vitality you know are possible, but somehow went missing. Explore the fully unlocked 10-week audio archive inside a private Marco Polo Sharecast entirely at your own pace.
🧘 The ABCs of a Deep Seat: A free guide to finding your centered, grounded connection—that frequency that keeps you from being thrown when the trail of life gets rough.
