Bravey: Chasing Dreams, Befriending Pain, and Other Big Ideas

by Alexi Pappas

I imagine all little girls as potatoes, wondrous nuggets of raw potential just waiting to be shaped by their mom-chefs. Whether your mom tenderly styles you into a Hasselback dish, tosses you in the microwave, or is totally absent, she is going to affect you.

People have a certain demeanor when they’re smoking cigarettes, like they’re listening to a story they’ve heard before, as if they’d rather be out there, somewhere else. Their hands are occupied and so is their mouth; they are not able to hold your hand or kiss you.

And when you feel sad for someone it’s very hard to resent them, even if they’re hurting you. But it’s also impossible to admire and look up to someone you feel sorry for.

Life never serves you the lessons you need in the way you might imagine you’d receive them, but the lessons are nonetheless there, even if they are embedded in blood.

All dead people should know this: They’re going to matter, even if they think they won’t and even if they don’t want to. I understand now that toward the end, my mother was so sick that she didn’t want to be part of this world any longer. She thought she could fade away. But her absence meant as much to me as her presence would have.

It was intellectually instructional but emotionally painful. It felt like touching hot candle wax, where you want to do it and still keep doing it even though it hurts.

Parents aren’t meant to protect their kids from failure or heartbreak or being ugly—those things are all a natural part of growing up and figuring things out.

I once read that the chances of any person being born as themselves instead of as a different genetic combination is estimated to be the same as if two million people rolled a trillion-sided die and all got the same number. We are who we are. We are all little marvels.

“pulling back the cloud,” which was when you use a spoon to pull the foam back on a cappuccino and pour a packet of sugar in and then let the cloud close again.

We should never want to become anyone else, because the greatest fulfillment we can ever get out of life is by becoming the best possible version of ourselves. To magically become someone else would be to skip the journey of becoming our ultimate thing, our very big selves.

Sometimes it hurts to know you can do it. It’s an intimidating thing to realize because it means that the only person who can really define your growth and happiness is yourself. There is no shortcut to becoming your best self. The responsibility is on you.

I needed to understand how to love myself like Kati’s mom loved her family. Food is a good way to show love to yourself.

You have to believe you are deserving of good surprises in life. You set yourself up for it. You walk with your eyes open enough to catch the eye of the person who will invite you in. Maybe they won’t but maybe they will. Luck can be cultivated.

Without missing a beat, she looked straight at me and told me I should use my body as best I can while it’s still at my disposal.

A good mentor is a living example of the type of person you’d like to be, and you can learn from them simply by being in their vicinity and paying attention. And the older I got, the more my hunger for mentors grew. I was always on the lookout.

When a woman you admire that much gives you the chance to get close to her, you take it.

To be pushed by someone who truly believes in you is a huge gift. It is like they’re pushing you and pulling you at the same time. It is a love that comes from a place of wanting you to be there with them.

When the same bad things happen to a group of people time and time again, it is important to look closer at the failed system that is responsible. We are failing ourselves if we don’t.

Braveys, the biggest takeaway is this: We can’t control the engine we’re given. But how we treat our engine is entirely up to us. It will take us to the moon if we let it.

I worked on consciously shifting my mental energy from dreading upcoming pain to simply recognizing that the pain would always show up no matter what, and even though I utterly despised it, I should try to greet it politely like a guest at a dinner party and be fully prepared to open the door when it does. Sometimes pain arrives slowly, like butter melting on toast. Or it can be quick, like butter hitting a very hot pan. Whichever variety of pain I’m getting, I know it is coming and I am prepared to handle it gracefully.