Brave Enough
Letters on fear, courage, and meaning — by Ryan Combes
Survival
"Ryan, I don't understand why you're risking your life."
It was my father’s voice, crackling and tinny as it made its way across the 5,000 miles between us.
He was in the Australian outback, his life reduced to a hatchback stuffed with clothes, gold coins, and a bike. He drifted from property to property, trading labor for shelter, never knowing where he’d be in two weeks’ time.
Amid all that instability, he clung to one certainty: I had to join him.
The cheerful song of Hawaiian birds outside rang clear, the sunlight pouring through my window — but none of it reached me.
I only felt my heart ache, my body tense as I took a deep breath. Here we go again.
His fear seemed woven into the wires of the phone line, carried across the ocean until it lay bitter on my tongue.
I struggled to answer.
I could offer him all the obvious reasons — my friends, my girlfriend, my mom, finishing high school — but none of them ever satisfied him.
He would assert that if I stayed, my chances of survival were low.
And to him, nothing mattered more than survival.
This was nothing new.
Since childhood, my dad warned whoever would listen that it was too dangerous to live in America because they were coming for us.
He said the only chance for safety was to escape far away, somewhere like Australia or New Zealand, and live off-grid in the boonies.
My mom refused to go farther than Hawai`i, so they divorced, and he shifted focus to me. This call from Australia was just one of countless attempts to persuade me.
The message never changed: this was my last chance to drop everything and join him in building our refuge. Wait any longer, and it’ll be too late.
I’d hang up and feel my chest constrict, my lungs folding in on themselves. Survival had a way of suffocating me even while I sat safe at home.
Despite my present security, I believed him. He was my father, and I believed him.
In my mind I ran to grocery stores with empty shelves, people fighting over food. I met my mother’s gaze as we realized we’d die a slow and painful death. The guilt for not listening would consume me.
He bought me an Australian visa. I stared at it — my escape hatch — every survival instinct telling me to run. To save myself while I still could.
I was perpetually on the brink of caving and asking for the ticket that would take me to safety across the Pacific.
But I couldn’t do it.
Something kept me there, despite the overwhelming fear.
Clarity
I want to live, not just survive.
That conviction kept me in Hawai`i and carried me toward a life of my own.
Fear said to escape this world and find another where the danger didn’t exist, even if it meant giving up everything worth living for. But I couldn’t do it.
I loved my friends too much. My girlfriend. My mom.
At the same time, dreams were forming in me: hopeful visions for what my future could hold.
After these calls, I’d go to the beach and play in the surf with my friends, sun and salt soaking into my skin, or find inspiration in books on exploring Mars.
Their love, and my vision for a hopeful future, pushed back against the fear. Even in a world of evil, this good remained.
And it was worth staying for.
But the fear didn’t disappear.
It followed me, looming overhead at every step, and my father didn’t silence his warnings.
Every life decision then prompted the question: would I choose to live or survive?
Defiance
The choice of whether to attend college was tormenting. College meant moving closer to the very cities my father feared. After months of deliberation, a few hours before the deadline, I signed my enrollment agreement.
This decision cracked something open in me: the power to defy the defier — the man who had spent so many years rebelling against “the system,” yet demanding I submit to his fear.
Years later, I would test that defiance with a bolder choice.
I had grown committed to personal and spiritual growth, and now sought to connect with others on a similar journey. So, in 2021, I signed up for a retreat hosted in Costa Rica.
It was a decision entirely my own, driven by pure passion, not survival.
I knew my father would deter me, as he believed that COVID was a ploy to establish authoritarian rule. When I shared my plans with him, he replied that he doubted it would happen as the world would surely fall apart by then. He urged me not to go.
I remember packing my bags and standing in line at the gate, his warnings ringing loudly in my ears, the fear a tight knot in my stomach. I imagined being stranded in a foreign country as it erupted into chaos, no way home.
Then I boarded the plane.
The fear clung on, but as we flew over the turquoise waters along northeastern Mexico, the farthest I’d been from the U.S., something deeper emerged: the joy of living.
For the first time, I felt what survival could never give me.
Cost
Most of us aren’t prepping for the apocalypse. But that doesn’t mean we aren’t surviving instead of living.
Survival takes many forms: staying in the job you hate, not ending the relationship you know isn’t enough, postponing that dream for “someday.” Sometimes it means shrinking ourselves, silencing the inner voice and mistaking fear for wisdom.
I know, because the fearful lure of survival tempted me too.
But my father chose survival and lost everything good. His marriage. His friends. His home. Even his children.
And yet, he was never safe.
None of us are.
Death walks beside us always; it’s never if, only when.
And when we choose survival, we sacrifice life itself: our fleeting chance to savor the joy of living.
Fear mutes the birdsong and sunlight. Courage opens the turquoise waters.
Where are you choosing survival, and what is it costing you?
With love,
Ryan
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P.S. If this letter made you think of someone, please consider passing it along. It means more than you know.
My Hidden Struggle — The grim underbelly of my drive toward courage.
My Fear of Happiness — How survival instincts can keep us from joy.
Another Kind of Prison — What I learned after I finally got the life I wanted.