One way to be brave is to read a Brave New World by Aldous Huxley 📚

Jump into the world of Clyde the Glyde. Located on the side of the Helium Comedy Club in Portland, Oregon. You have a mural of former Portland Trail Blazers basketball star Clyde Drexler painted by Mark Paul Deren and Japanese Italian visual artist Enrico Isamu Oyama.

Jump into the world of Brave New World, written by Aldous Huxley back in 1931. A book that poses the question is it better to be happy or free? A book with a pretty memorable ending, and fascinating to learn of Aldous Huxley's career and how he continually reinvented his mental outlook for himself throughout his career. This book considers how important freedom is to one's life and the importance of individualism versus collectivism. In many ways, A Brave New World is a book that has you wondering if your life is perfect, but you don't know what exists under the surface that makes it perfect is it a life to live at all? It has a similar feel to when you watch the movie Matrix in that humans have been sucked for their life force by having their minds uploaded to a computer program to create this perfect false reality when in the words of Jordan Peterson, "Life is very difficult. One of the most ancient of religious ideas that emerges everywhere, I would say, is that life is essentially suffering". When we face reality, it causes suffering, but in these moments of despair are true human selves, and lessons are to be learned to forge our best selves. 

My favorite quotes from Aldous Huxley

"Words can be like X-rays if you use them properly -- they'll go through anything. You read and you're pierced." 

"Actual happiness always looks pretty squalid in comparison with the overcompensations for misery. And, of course, stability isn't nearly so spectacular as instability. And being contented has none of the glamour of a good fight against misfortune, none of the picturesqueness of a struggle with temptation, or a fatal overthrow by passion or doubt. Happiness is never grand."