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To Risk

To laugh is to risk appearing a fool.
To weep is to risk appearing sentimental.
To reach out to another is to risk involvement.
To expose feelings is to risk exposing your true self.
To place your ideas and drams before a crowd is to risk their loss.
To love is to risk not being loved in return.
To hope is to risk despair.
To try is to risk failure.
But risks must be taken because the greatest hazard in life is to risk nothing.
The person who risks nothing, does nothing, has nothing, is nothing.
He may avoid suffering and sorrow,
But he cannot learn, feel, change, grow, or live.
Chained by his servitude he is a slave who has forfeited all freedom.
Only a person who risks is free.
The pessimist complains about the wind; The optimist expects it to change;
And the realist adjusts the sails.

                                                                           ~ William Arthur Ward

 

TAKING A RISK is difficult for me. One of my favorite movies is about the little boy obsessing for an “official Red Ryder, carbine action, 200-shot, range model air rifle, with a compass in the stock and this thing that tells time” for Christmas – yeah, the little twerp with the round glasses and impish grin, remember him? His mom didn’t want him to have a BB gun – “You’ll shoot your eye out,” she promised. Moms tend to do that…play it safe and avoid risks. They bundle us in thermal layers, hoard everything, and recall tramping to school through ten-foot snow drifts, even if they were lived for all of their childhood in Boca Raton!

But that’s what they’re supposed to do – dampen our reckless ways and protect us from ourselves until we “know better.” Unfortunately, a lot of us haven’t really grown up, and never bought that BB gun. Instead, we let other people become our mothers (spouses, managers, even “friends”) to stifle our frivolous ambition and bring us back to “reality” – preferring we meet our federally insured deaths safely (though obscurely). Risk-taking is just that, taking a chance – on life, love, on “cool” clothing, “hot” cars, and yes, on our business. Venturing outside of our comfort zone of complacency, conformity, mediocrity, and looking beyond Papier-mâché barriers that seem like boulders – focusing instead on the grand prize just beyond. Set good (lofty, impossible) goals and most obstacles will topple or crumble. Most were never there. Your mom made them up so you wouldn’t “shoot your eye out,” or get your tongue stuck on a frozen flag pole.