Risk is Unavoidable

There is no safe way to live. Living itself brings risk and growth.  When you live on the edge choosing what is, you are living with awareness about yourself.

Sharon C. Brown & Pat A. Paulson & Joann Wolf Living on Purpose Cited in Meditations for The New Age

“Life… Love… Existence itself involves some degree of ongoing risk. The risk can come from our personal choices or the unwillingness to make a choice can sometimes increase our risk factors. Risk comes from our society and the quality and the chaos of our social interactions.

Lastly, risk comes from living on earth-dealing with the vicissitudes of climate change, pollution, and both natural disasters and man-made endangerment to our health and wellbeing…

Risk, then, is inescapable! Even people who go to extremes to avoid the possibilities of germs or any communicable disease, such as Howard Hughes, will eventually fail… Life is risky;

There is no doubt! Without learning how to adapt, as Darwin taught us, we can quickly risk becoming extinct! One of the tasks of any person who lives in society, who lives on planet earth, is to cultivate sufficient awareness, knowledge, and wisdom/common sense to lessen their risk factors.”

So… IF this is all true, then the goal and the purpose of a society that wants to thrive or a culture that wants to survive, requires a wholehearted, focussed, and ongoing commitment to educate its citizens and members on how best to avoid risk; and how best to increase the odds of their usefulness and longevity!

On the emotional/social levels, this risk can have a tender outcome or could result in cruelty. There seems to be no end to the possibilities of heartache within families and within groups where we have to risk being honest and ethical, where we have to risk being open about our feelings and loyalties. 

We have to risk daily, or so it seems, the possibility that we will not be approved of for some arbitrary reason; or that we will risk alienation from family, friends, one’s workplace etc., if we think more independently than the status quo…

So what to do? There is a poem of wisdom and consolation that have always given me the assurance I have needed. It goes like this: 

To Risk:

To laugh is to risk appearing the fool; To weep is to risk appearing sentimental

To reach out to another is to risk exposing one’s true self; to place our ideas- 

our dreams-before the crowd, is to risk loss. 

To love is to risk not being loved in return; 

To hope is to risk failure;

To live fully is to risk dying from going through the motions of an unlived life.