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

by Alexi Pappas

Nobody said high school had to make any sense. It’s a washing machine. It is rough-and-tumble. You will come out different than you went in. You might turn pink.

If you find someone who pulls you out of the real world and makes you feel like the two of you are inside your own little snow globe, hold on to them.

It’s just not worth it to spend your life with a “no” person. It isn’t always immediately obvious when someone is a “no” person—it starts small.

It takes confidence to be the first two people who believe in something, whether it’s love or anything else. You need to be the visionary for your own potential.

We decided that the only way for us to succeed was to surrender all preconceived notions of individual ownership of our achievements, our workload, and our income. There is no time or space for pettiness when you are trying to get to the moon together.

being motivated by fear of failure is the surest way to fail, especially in the athletic and creative worlds.

Discipline, I learned, just means making choices in favor of your goals. It doesn’t mean you’re un-chill; it means you know what you want.

dear boy in middle school who told me i look like a “before” picture: i’m not mad anymore. you are brilliant. i am always becoming a better me.

So I wished he would just get mad at me when I was being a brat. I wanted him to yell that I could never repay him for all he had sacrificed for me. I wanted him to admit that he was sad. But he never did. And the fact that he never got mad ended up making me feel sad.

We single-parented folk still have those same impulses to get annoyed at our parent, except I think we carry a heavier burden, an awareness that it’s just us kids and our one parent against the world. When we storm away to our room in a fit of teenage moodiness, we don’t have the comfort of knowing that on the other side of the door, our mom and dad are putting their heads together and asking, “How are we gonna deal with that kid?” Instead, we have the truth that our single parent is alone out there in the living room, maybe feeling just as lost as we are.

Whenever I see a dad-daughter combination out in the wild, I’ll feel a little pang in my heart, in the same place where my dad-sadness resides. Even if I don’t know anything about the dads or the daughters, I feel compelled to cheer them on—like when you’re running down a hill and someone else passes you in the opposite direction. No matter how good an athlete they are, there is still a hill ahead for them to climb.

are, all little girls have needs and fears. And when little girls are afraid, that’s when their dads can’t be. In these moments the dad needs to be the one who knows what made the noise, where the light switch is, and what comes next.

here’s the thing about parents: Even if you feel like you owe them a debt of gratitude that you can never repay, they don’t want you to repay it. You can call them more often, visit, and send handwritten notes—but you can never balance out all that they’ve done for you. That’s not the way it works. It’s not your job to assign a sadness to your parents that maybe isn’t really there. Actually, the sad is not sad at all. It’s just love.

dad at times a punching bag at times an umbrella whether i am monster or cinderella you are everything you incredible fella

When you’re waist-deep in a tough marathon, you feel each and every second to its absolute fullest. A minute has never passed so slowly, which also means I have never appreciated what a minute is so thoroughly.

damaging. Life is not about reducing our pain to nothing, it is about embracing pain and challenge as an invitation to rise and grow.

As with so many feminine things I’ve experienced while growing up, I was on the other side of the glass—always outside peering in, imitating, adopting, projecting, but never inherently a part of it. I sensed power but I had no power.

my body couldn’t keep up with what my mind wanted it to do. I think every younger sibling of a certain age has this feeling: They know what they want yet are tragically under-equipped to get it.

Regarding motherhood, maybe I will or maybe I won’t, but I’ll never think that I can’t.

Sometimes, people will have convinced themselves that they’re committed, but in reality they’re only committed just enough to check the box “tried to pursue dreams” before retreating to the safety of the backup plan. I’ve had so many teammates complain to me about how hard it is to be a professional runner, or friends vent about how hard it is to find their dream job, but I’m not a good shoulder to cry on. I’m someone who will take your dreams very seriously, and if you come to me with a complaint I’m going to figure out how to help you accomplish your goal. Not everyone likes it when they’re confronted with the reality of what they’ll need to do if they’re serious about their dreams. Because the truth is, most people are really just interested.

Being committed isn’t about the end result; it’s about giving yourself the very best chance to get there.

It can feel safer to think that certain things are impossible than to believe that just about anything is possible if you are scrappy, creative, and bold, and don’t give up—if you see barriers as things to overcome rather than reasons to quit.

Once you have your needs taken care of, it’s time to show up and then keep showing up every single day. It’s time to take your commitment seriously. It’s time to do the same thing over and over. During this stage in the process you will need to plan your days, say no to ninety percent of going-out nights, say no to fifty percent of wedding invitations, say yes to naps, and make time for all the details that will add up to your dream. It’s easy to feel like there’s not enough time in the day, but time can be elastic.

possibility. Maybe is a blank canvas that you can paint with inevitability if you are committed. It is often unglamorous, at least from the outside. But it’s brave to be committed. And I think brave is glamorous.

farcical.

many things behind many things ahead why feel afraid when you can be brave instead?