On Bravery and Resilience

Analysis of a children’s movie, a little educational psychology, and remembering our mortality.

Puss in Boots is smart.

I watched the movie Puss in Boots: the Last Wish over the weekend. While many children’s movies are a bit heavy-handed with the syrupy moral lessons, this one was remarkably clever. It’s a witty tale that contains the valuable message that stepping out of stagnancy to pursue the unknown yields positive and interesting rewards.

In the movie, Puss realizes that he is on his final ninth life. The town doctor recommends that he go into retirement, which our “favorite fearless hero” initially scoffs at. It isn’t until Puss comes face-to-face with his ultimate mortality via a bounty hunter wolf that he feels fearful enough to call it quits. He buries his signature boots, and retreats to Mama Luna’s cat sanctuary: a safe refuge for a hundred or so cats, for whom Mama Luna lovingly provides troughs of dry food, padded scratching posts, and knit booties for every foot. No claws out in this house. Here, Puss grows tired and dull, living a succession of homogenized days, until the Mama Luna’s place is invaded. The invaders reveal the existence of a magical scroll that will grant its possessor one wish (this is a children’s movie, after all). The potential of a better life — in this case, wishing for more lives — brings Puss out of retirement and on a grand adventure. Albeit not as sharp as he used to be, and without his former characteristic fearlessness, Puss courageously confronts a series of challenges and learns to embrace friendship along the way.

Choosing the illusion of safety and comfort over adventure and growth is a pattern as old as time. This sort of dynamic plays out in all of our lives at different points and in different ways. We all have been and inevitably will be asked, or invited, or forced to move out of comfortable sameness into certain uncertainty.

Stability, security, and rest are necessary aspects of the cycles of life. Especially after a harrowing loss, or while experiencing grief, we deserve to take extra time to retreat. Some chapters call for gentler rhythms, and we ought to honor that.

And, as we also know, prolonged periods of padding and protection do not actually protect us from the world. Even in a warm cat sanctuary, three bears and a girl called Goldi(locks) might crash through the window at any moment, disrupting our sense of safety.

Nothing will protect us from the inevitability of death. In fact, that seems to be the only thing that we know for certain: we must one day die. This begs us to ask ourselves, how do I want to live? The point, as I see it, is not to dwell on the uneasiness of eventual death, but to choose to fully live our lives now, when we are here.

The Zone of Proximal Development.

I think often of this concept initially introduced to me by a religious studies professor: the zone of proximal development. In educational psychology, this term is used to describe the space between what is known and not yet known, or, what the student can do without assistance or guidance.¹ For example, a child does not learn to read with adult nonfiction, as that is too far beyond their capabilities. Contrastingly, their development will plateau if they only practice with books comprised of single-syllable words. “See the girl run” will only be challenging for so long. A good teacher will work to make sure that each child is progressively learning what they do not yet know. Their zones of proximal development should shift as they acquire more knowledge and ability.

While definitely taken out of its context, I find this concept incredibly useful to think about the way people experience growth generally. Continuing to exist in a realm of familiarity without pushing ourselves will not allow us to grow in the ways we wish to. While the phrase “growth happens out of your comfort zone” is indeed cliché, it is still true. Progress or expansion requires that we venture into the unknown and trust that we will be able to figure it out.

‘Be brave’ is still good advice.

It seems that in some sections of the self-help arena, bravery either gets dismissed or excessively reframed to mean almost anything. It is, perhaps, the pendulum swinging to the opposite side of where “pull yourself up by your bootstraps” and “no pain no gain” sit together. Thank god for the space in between.

While I am certainly one to say that there is great strength in softness, and that letting yourself fall apart can be courageous and important, I also love and value the kind of bravery that urges us to face challenges, accept difficulty, and persist.

Bravery is subjective and situational: what may require great strength for one person may not for the next guy. Different situations call for different forms of strength.

I recently listened to a fascinating interview on resilience with

Alexander Beiner

of The Bigger Picture and George Bonanno, a trauma researcher. (Yes, I am relating resilience and bravery here, bear with me.) Essentially, Bonanno says, while many character traits may indicate resilience in a person, “what really predicts one’s resilience is being able to use the right trait and adaptation at the right time…”²

This applies to bravery as well. There isn’t a script to tell you how to be brave or navigate hardship. To paraphrase Bonanno’s words, what matters isn’t having a list of skills or traits to check off, but rather your orientation toward challenge. An orientation that involves trusting your capacity to move through challenges as they arise is likely to be sustainably supportive.

Growth requires friction, and you can handle it.

Favoring continuous comfort over the potential risk of getting scratched is unlikely to get you where you want to go. Continually examining what challenges you are being asked (or invited, or forced) to face is a reliable way to grow. Are you interested in what lies on the other side? Can you trust that whatever it is, you will figure it out?

As Puss reminds us, when you only have one life, you should live it honestly and bravely. Tie your shoes and take a breath and face your damn fears.

Remember that you are strong.

Maggie

1. Social constructivist Lev Vygotsky brought us the concept of the zone of proximal development. He’s also known for introducing ‘scaffolding,’ a process of providing varying levels of support based on the individual’s needs, then tapering off so that they can eventually do it by themselves.

2.

Alexander Beiner

wrote this excellent article called “The Truth About Trauma…”, linked here, for which he interviewed a few well-known trauma researchers. I found my previously-held beliefs about trauma challenged. It is worth a read.