When I sat down to write this reflection on the book Braver Than You Think by Maggie Downs, it seemed to me a really weird thing to do. I almost never review books on the site anymore and I’m not really reviewing one now. I almost never — in a decade of doing this stuff — do unboxing videos and I’m not now. I don’t do ads, this isn’t one. If I reviewed books from my entire Goodreads account, books I’ve only begun or simply want to read, this would fit into that category. Braver Than You Think, due to my reading schedule and list, I simply cannot afford time to read. Research demands, prep work for my own writing, other for-fun reads (am I ever going to finish Kim Stanley Robinson’s Mars series? Or Infinite Jest?) keep me from reading it.

But I wish I could. Truly.

Perhaps another Lancelot in another world would tear into the thing. Perhaps he already has. This one can’t.

Yet it’s a book I’m almost certain I would like.

Braver Than You Think, from reviews and the synopsis I’ve read, seems written for people like me. The author’s mother read her many issues of Nat Geo in childhood. Maggie dreamed of traveling with mom. Her mom got Alzheimer’s and couldn’t when the time came.

Meanwhile, my Dad died in November. He was sixty-five. Covid + Remdisivir + Roundup. I’m still surprised at how many folks are just finding out. (The eulogy is here if you want to hear my stumbling attempts at preaching and Speaking for the Dead). In any case, I’m going to try to talk about Dad more often. As rough as we had it at times, he really was a good man who sacrificed more than most. In some cases, dad sacrificed more than some dads should sacrifice.

Dad didn’t show us Nat Geo as often as Maggie’s mother. We did see nature documentaries. We did encounter wilderness. Many, many national parks. Dad envied his parents road tripping to Alaska and back. He envied me going off to college. Then San Diego. Detroit for internships. Eventually NYC and beyond. So I’d sworn to him the next time I went to Alaska for this documentary thing, whether or not the film was getting made, I’d bring him along.

He died five months before that most recent trip.

My encounter with the wide world through dad’s eyes came more from James Bond films. From weird Sci Fi takes. From watching the Olympics and old road trip films. And honestly foreign films. For a Southern Illinois hick, dad was remarkably cultured in the film department. He introduced me to Citizen Kane and Hitchcock and The Godfather at a very, very young age. Criterion collection before they really ordered that stuff online. We talked about what made a story good, a film good, a shot good, a director good, a set good, a production good. All of that assumed a location. We talked about this every time we went before that yellowing silver screen and let the old fruit rollup floor stick to our sneakers.

Afterwards, we talked about where we’d go.

As I said in the eulogy, I swear I heard him say the day he died in this ethereal, disembodied voice: “Run free, run fast, it’s just over the other hill.” One of the things that meant was I need to stop being afraid of how travel’s required for my creative work. Travel’s required for my studies. I go cheaply, I go with my bride and sometimes stay with friends, but I do go.

Elizabethtown’s one of the films with the deepest resonance for me. I felt that long before dad died. I dreaded he would die and I’d incarnate Orlando Bloom’s character.

He did.

I have.

I think in another life, I’d read Braver Than You Think for the same reason I wrote Harry Rides the Danger. Cause courage isn’t about doing it stupid. Courage is:

• Do it as early as you’re convicted to do it
• Do it scared
• Do it knowing you’ll be ignorant about something
• Do it in the teeth of the dragon
• With the cynics mocking you and friends abandoning you
• Die trying, die laughing, die doing it alongside those who helped you fail well

I realized this year that sometimes courage is being willing to be called a coward. Sometimes courage is being willing to be called weak or passive or a pushover. Sometimes courage is just shutting up when people say terrible things to your face and behind your back. Sometimes courage is traveling because you have to even when it makes people mad or jealous or they misunderstand your work’s final cause. Sometimes you travel courageously because you want to. Sometimes both. Sometimes courage means staying home even when work calls you forth from your hobbit hole in the NYC heavens or even right about the time people are catching up on their travel dreams — their bucket list items you unintentionally checked off through your own life and work.

Whatever the case, the road goes ever on and on. And like Maggie, I had a Dad who knew I was brave. I never gave myself credit for all the times I did the courageous thing, especially on the road, at sea, in the air. I have a father in the faith too that knows I am good when I don’t. Chris calls me regularly or grabs my shoulder and says, “You’re a good man, Lance.”

He was standing at the back of my father’s funeral, almost seven feet tall with a wingspan like Manute Bol. “Good job, son,” he said the moment I finished the eulogy. He’d travelled from Joplin likely between trips to Japan and India. His colleague, Dave, had come just to translate for Dad’s Dominican fiancée, Germania. “Good job, son. You’re a good man. He would have loved that.”

And I, relieved, fell into a weepy mess inside the Gandalf version of Manute Bol’s hug.

That’s enough, sometimes. To have someone see — from the outside — tell you you’re braver than you think. So you can face the dragon on the journey from the alone to the Alone. So you can preach the sermon no one wants to preach and write your page in the book no one wants to write:

A page in the book of life.

Thanks for the kindred spirit, Maggie, wherever and whomever you are. You seem like a pretty neat person. I can’t read the book right now, I’m truly sorry for that, but if you come to Brooklyn, I’m buying you a beer.

And hopefully, once things settle down, I can return to it. I tend to be last to the party, but latest to leave.