Hidden Layers Behind Public Courage

Last Thursday, I finished my second free summer writing workshop that I’ve been offering over Zoom. Before the session began, I took a screenshot of myself, thinking I’d include it later with a group photo art college I wanted to make of everyone on screen at the end, as a way to document the full experience and what we had made together in the workshop.

But just as the call ended and I was about to take that photo, a thunderstorm rolled in and knocked out the power in my house, so the group photo was never taken. Right at the moment I was preparing to capture the group, everything went black. Hours later, when the power returned and I was back on my computer, the only image I had was that earlier screenshot. It felt more like residue than documentation, especially since I had imagined something collective, something more lasting than just a photo of me smiling at the camera.

The moment was small, but it pointed me toward something that happens quietly beneath the surface: sometimes, you work up all this courage to do the thing, and you know it’s not about you. But then something unexpected happens, and the lens turns back. And you’re left facing yourself in the aftermath, when the structure has fallen away and the adrenaline is gone, facing the person who stayed behind when the moment moved on.

It’s not only the public acts of courage that can feel the most revealing or intense, but also the hidden layers of vulnerability that catch up with us later, too.

The awkward silence after the workshop ended abruptly, and me sitting in the dark reminded me that even when the work is outward-facing, it still comes from a world that includes me. And that’s the hardest part to hold, because the work doesn’t just live out in the open, separate from its source. It loops back, quietly asking something of the person who made it:

What happens when the lens turns back on what you tried to give away?

What kind of courage does it take to make something and not just disappear?

Can you still allow yourself to be seen, even if you were just planning on sharing with everyone else?

With my artwork and writing, I want nothing more than to carefully and meaningfully create open worlds that people feel they can enter and return to, places where discovery feels real and alive. But what I’m also learning is that while it is courageous to share something with the world, it is also a form of courage to let the world behind the work be “real and alive” too, even when it turns out smaller, quieter, or more ordinary and fragmented than the original idea. When I make things, I am happy to let them go out into the world, letting them land where they need to land. But what I want to try and practice doing is not letting myself disappear, too. 

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So if you happen to be like me, and sometimes hesitate in the moments after the publicly courageous moment part is over, perhaps this is something we can pay attention to. Maybe it’s a photo that wasn’t part of the plan, or a glimpse of something not yet finished. But sometimes that quiet return...the part you didn’t script...is where a different kind of courage begins:is where a different kind of courage begins: returning to what remains and letting it be part of the stories and the worlds you're building, too.

-Morgan Harper Nichols