Bravery

Yesterday while standing in the grocery checkout line, I saw a story on the cover of a tabloid, I think it was US Weekly, about Christina Applegate's "brave" fight with cancer. I've never understood the use of the term "brave" with respect to a disease. To me, bravery is when you knowingly do something that puts you at personal risk for reasons that are generally not selfish. A soldier throwing herself on a grenade to protect her comrades is brave. A neighbor who runs into a burning house to try to save people is brave. Even a family member who decides to donate an organ to another family member is brave because surgery is always risky and they know this risk up front but willingly accept it.

It is not bravery when someone is a victim of something unknowable or unpredictable. Someone surviving a car crash is not brave, they're lucky. Likewise, when a person gets cancer and receives treatment for it, that's not bravery. The person didn't make a decision to get cancer so that someone else they care about would be spared. That would be brave. The person who contracted the disease was simply unlucky enough to get cancer. Once you get cancer, you have two choices. Do nothing and probably die from it or do what they doctors tell you and hopefully recover or maybe even get cured. Few people pick the former unless the cancer is so advanced or they have other problems that preclude effective treatment.

So, the way this goes is that people contract cancer, a doctor lays out a treatment plan, and the patient follows it to the best of his/her ability. There is nothing brave about doing this. It's your only option. It's like saying I was brave when I had my appendix removed and then had to sit home for a month with two gaping holes in my stomach while I healed. I wasn't brave. If I didn't have surgery, I would be dead. Confronted with that "choice," I did the only thing that a rational person would do. Let the doctors do their thing and follow their advice to heal myself. Cancer patients do the exact same thing. They're not brave, they simply want to live and so they do exactly what they need to do to give themselves the best shot at doing so.

This doesn't mean I don't respect how physically and emotionally taxing cancer can be. Like most people, I've seen family members die from cancer and nothing about it is pleasant. But I think we overuse terms live "brave" and "hero" in our country. It's part of this whole notion that we constantly have to pump everyone up. While reading yesterday's newspaper, there was a cover story in the Parade magazine about Meg Ryan, Annette Benning, and Eva Mendes with the subtitle, "We're not the women you think we are." Well, I hate to break it to them, but I don't think about any of them at all. I have no concept of who they might be because I couldn't care less. I spent more time thinking about my sandwich this morning then I've ever spent thinking about all three of these women combined. But again, we live in a society where everyone has to have this inflated sense of importance. Sometimes, they try to create it themselves as celebrities do when they seek attention. Sometimes it is thrust upon people when the media calls them "brave" or "hero" for doing something that anyone would do when faced with the same situation. Why do we feel the need to label every human action or response?