Which came first, the chicken or the egg? - Running Brave

     As complex as a human life may be, regardless of its many twists and turns, it can be summed up in one simple word: decisions. Life is in itself a collection of choices that each people makes that, when combined, make up a common result. These choices are clearly influenced by our own experiences, as all of the moments in our own individual histories are what makes us who we are, what impulses us to make the decisions that we do. Billy Mills made numerous choices throughout his journey that took him from place to place, physically as well as emotionally, mentally, and spiritually.

     Contrary to popular perception, a “place” does not always have to be physical. When we're having a hard time, it is common to make use of the expressions: “I'm in a bad place right now” or “John is really in a dark place”. Do we ever stop and think about what it is that we really mean by this? Each person has inside their mind an enormous world made up of their imagination. However, this doesn't necessarily mean that this made up world is any less real than the physical “reality” of this dimension.

     Billy Mills had the opportunity of traveling a lot during the course of his life as a young adult. All of these trips are what make up his external journey, a physical one. First, he traveled 650 miles outside of his home to go off to college, where he confronted a whole new world very different from the one that he had grown up in. Once in school, he took time off to work with his own very personal concerns, which also made him travel 10 hours home and back as he oscillated between Billy Mills the runner and college student, and Billy Mills the small town indian. Aside from this, he also had the chance to travel the world because of his career, making it all the way to Tokyo to represent his homeland in the World Olympics.

     As real and active as this passage was, Mills also experienced a very personal and emotional trip: his internal journey. This one was made up of all of his thoughts, insecurities, expectations, feelings and ideas about the world and the life he was choosing for himself. Billy's internal journey is evident from the very beginning of the film. As perhaps a stereotypical quality as a native american indian, he was always a very reflective and meditative young man. This means that even if he was seemingly quiet or static, his mind made him travel at uncountable miles per hour inside his own world. All of us are really like this, some more than others, but Billy was very conscious about his journey and constantly seemed to be trying to figure out where he wanted it to take him, who he really wanted to be.

     One of the clearest examples of this is his constant internal conflict between the regular college kid and the american indian that he felt like he used to be. When Mills goes off to college, it almost seems like he has slowly lost the strong connection with his refugee life, but he still doesn't seem to quite fit in with the modern world. As a result, Billy feels lost in his internal journey, as he no longer has a clear idea of who he is and who he wants to be. This is clearly visible in the dorm scene where he yells back at another boy saying “I am not a chief!”. The fact that he gets so angry over his schoolmate's immature remark is indicative of how much his internal journey was affecting him emotionally, and how much more in his internal journey he had yet to go.

     All of the decisions that Billy Mills made guided his internal and external journey, and made him arrive at the psychological and physical places that he went to. Both of these traveling experiences were always interconnected, as some decisions in his physical journey affected his emotional, mental, or spiritual state, and vice versa. Every person has in their hands the power to write their own story through the course of their internal and external journeys. The charm of it all is that it is sometimes almost impossible to figure out which one came first, which turns life as we perceive it into a beautifully blended mixture of endless voyages.