All It Takes Is a Few Seconds of Bravery

Mara here:

I had to go to the dentist a couple of weeks ago. I hate the dentist. The dentist and I have a not so great history.

I have very weak teeth. I've been told that malnourishment when I was an infant in Korea is probably the reason my baby and adult teeth never formed correctly. My enamel is weak. I remember going to a check up at the dentist when I was a child and being told I had eight cavities. EIGHT.

My adult teeth have not been much better. It hasn't helped that after a childhood of many painful visits to the dentist, I have an extreme aversion to going to the dentist. I just don't do it unless I absolutely have to. I once went a decade without going. And then things went very badly for me.

One year, I had abscess in a tooth while I was on a train between New York City and Washington DC. A few years ago, the root of one of my teeth snapped in half and it needed to be pulled. Most of my teeth have fillings, and at least half of my molars have had root canals.

Last year, I actually had three teeth crumble, literally, out of my mouth. I was spitting out pieces of teeth that had broken. In my complete inability to deal with what was happening, I would simply put the pieces of tooth down around the house—on the mantle, on my desk, on my dresser. I found a piece a couple weeks ago tucked away in a box that I keep my daily medications in.

If this sounds bizarre, it's because it is.

All my life, I've had a recurring nightmare about teeth crumbling out of my mouth, and now it was literally happening. It felt surreal.

So last year, when I spit out a large piece of tooth, I knew I had to go to the dentist. But I really didn't want to. In fact, every cell in my body was screaming at me to simply just ignore it. There wasn't pain, but I had a large piece of a tooth in my palm that was supposed to be in my mouth. Even though there was surprisingly no pain from the broken tooth, I knew I needed to get my mouth looked at. But I was afraid. I was afraid to go to the dentist. 

My fear of having to go to the dentist was so overwhelming that I spent a couple of days pacing around the house wondering if I could simply just not go. 

After years of neglect, it's hard to go to a dentist and explain why a person, who looks at first glance like a relatively responsible well taken care of person, has teeth falling out of her mouth.

But I knew it had to be done. I could tell there were problems with multiple teeth. It had been three years since my last visit to the dentist and there had been follow-up work from that visit that I had simply, well, not followed-up on.

So I stared at the phone. I hate the phone. I hate the dentist. Nothing about the situation was good.

There's a movie I saw a few years ago called We Bought A Zoo. It's based on the book of the same name by Benjamin Mee about how he bought a zoo, while raising his two kids after the death of his wife. The story is cute and the movie is charming to watch. It stars Matt Damon and the little girl who plays his daughter is ridiculously cute. But what I remember most about the movie is something that the character Benjamin says to his teenage son. They're discussing life and love, and Benjamin is trying to encourage his son to be brave. He says, “You know, sometimes all you need is twenty seconds of insane courage. Just literally twenty seconds of just embarrassing bravery. And I promise you, something great will come of it.”

And that idea, that sometimes to accomplish great things, we simply need a moment of insane courage, really stuck with me. Sometimes we have to do something quickly, ignoring any doubts, in the moment, to get the ball rolling.

And for me, last Fall, that moment was picking up the phone and making a call to the dentist.

It probably sounds silly to some people that calling the dentist would elicit such a reaction. But it does for me. So with my heart thumping and fears of pain and concern about the expense of the treatments flying through my head, I took a deep breath and called the dentist to make an appointment.

The whole phone call took a couple of minutes. And once it was done, it was done. There was no going back. And once I have the ball rolling, I'm fine with the process of going to the dentist and getting the work done.

All in all, in a month, I had seven appointments with my dentist, spent fours straight hours at the endodontist getting two root canals, and ended up with three crowns. I dutifully went in and endured hours and hours of discomfort. It cost us over $3000 out-of-pocket (our insurance covered an additional $3000).

But I survived.

So a couple of weeks ago when I got the reminder from the dentist that it was time to come in for a checkup, the memories of last Fall were fresh in my mind. I ignored the first email. I simply deleted it.

When the second reminder email came, I knew I needed to do the right thing and make an appointment. I could feel there was something wrong with one of my teeth, and I didn't want to wait until crumbled out of my mouth to do something about it.

After looking at the reminder email sit in my inbox for a few days, one morning I impulsively pushed aside my fears, grabbed my phone and made the call. It took less than a minute, just a handful of brave seconds. And it was done. 

There are so many things I can think of where it only takes those few seconds of bravery to make things happen. It can be right before telling someone you love them for the first time, or hitting send on an email about job. It can be that moment right before the nurse gives you a shot, or taking a deep breath before you step off the platform to bungee jump.

Big or little doesn't matter. It doesn't matter if other people wouldn't think it was brave. What matters is whether or not you make the decision to summon the strength inside yourself to do something that feels scary to you.

There really is something magical about realizing that if you can simply muster the courage to push yourself past a few seconds of fear, you can accomplish something that will be with you for your lifetime.

***

Here are two questions I asked my mom on this subject:

Is there a Buddhist approach to managing fear and encouraging bravery that might be helpful to people who feel as if they feel they're holding themselves back from accomplishing something they want?

I would say that Buddhist mindfulness and compassion practices help us manage fear and also encourage bravery. This is because a large part of being brave is taking action despite your fear. In my experience, you can't do that unless, first, you become aware that you're afraid (that's the mindfulness part) and then, second, refrain from turning away from that fear in aversion and, instead, open your heart to it and take care of it (that's the compassion part).

The expression "take care of it" comes from Thich Nhat Hanh, the Vietnamese Buddhist monk and one of my earliest teachers. In one of his books, he writes about taking care of our fear. To me, this means recognizing that everyone experiences fear during their lives so it's nothing to be ashamed of or embarrassed by. Instead, be compassionate to yourself over how painful fear can be. That takes away it's tight grip on you. As long as it remains hidden (that is, we're not mindful that it's present) and as long as it remains ugly to you (that is, you hate it instead of taking care of it), you're caught in its web and can't take skillful action, by which I mean action that you really need to in order to take care of yourself or others.

What I'm suggesting isn't always easy to do, which is why I love that quotation from We Bought a Zoo—Benjamin saying that sometimes all you need is twenty seconds of bravery. I write a lot about taking baby steps—baby steps toward compassion, baby steps toward equanimity. Twenty seconds is a good baby step.

And if you can't pull it off, with understanding and kindness, tell yourself that it's a really hard situation for you and then resolve to give it a try in another 15 minutes...or another hour...whatever suits you at the time. I can see this with you staring at the phone, knowing that you need to call the dentist. I'm sure there were times when you walked away from that phone. All of us have done that I'll bet. When we do, we're much more likely to be able to try again soon if we don't get down on ourselves but compassionately tell ourselves, "It's hard. I'll try again later."

Is there moment in your life when you remember needing an extra boost of courage to accomplish something?

I needed that extra boost of courage almost every time I walked into a law school classroom to teach. I always felt a big weight on my shoulders. First, I thought that a lot of the students were smarter than I was and that was intimidating. Second, I felt that they were there—and had paid a lot of money—for me to teach and inspire them, and I took that responsibility seriously. If I was teaching a new subject, I always lacked confidence that I'd be good enough. I remember many a day standing at the door to the classroom truly afraid to open it.

Of course, I knew I'd have to open that door at some point and when I did, I wanted to walk into the classroom looking like I belonged there, not like a deer in the headlights. And so I'd give myself a little pep talk as I stood outside the door: "You prepared for hours. It's okay if you don't know everything. You know enough. Just be yourself and try to enjoy the experience." That was my twenty seconds of bravery. Then I'd open the door and walk on in. 

*****

What about you? Can you think of something in your life that required a moment of extra bravery or courage to get through?