Leaping Without Looking

              How careful should we be as we live Life?

              When I look back on my life as I’ve lived it so far, I’m pretty convinced that I’ve played it too safe. There are just so, so many things I didn’t explore or try because there was too much of a chance that they’d turn out badly, or because I just didn’t know what would happen. They include:

- putting myself forward for a challenging job

- travelling to other countries / walking through certain neighborhoods

- telling someone what I really thought

- investing time/money/effort into appealing longshots

- risking violence or confrontation in defense of a person or a value

- declaring my attraction to a person

- putting forward an idea or creation for exploration and judgement

              There are times I have done such things, and I feel good about almost all of them. Yes, I’ve been embarrassed now and then, I’ve been rejected and I’ve failed. But these defeats were hardly ever as bad as I might have feared on those alternate occasions when I didn’t take my shot. I can’t say that I’ve ever suffered a really serious hurt or loss. And, there’s always been the compensation of having tried.

              Besides which, there’ve been the times I’ve succeeded, which have sometimes been life-changing. I once spoke to an attractive woman in a store, based on an instant’s eye contact and a feeling, and she became the love of my life and has shared the last seventeen years with me.

              On the flip side, there have been a handful of times when taking chances, or being careless (is it the same thing?) nearly led to disaster, or could have:

- remaining a passenger in a car with an obviously incompetent driver

- driving a stretch of highway during a snow storm, having decided to ignore alerts

- trying to carry a small amount of pot back onto a cruise ship in Jamaica

              I recall an occasion when I took a bath while a radio that was plugged into an electrical outlet rested on the edge of the tub. It was only much later that I realized what I’d done, and the memory still causes me to cringe.

              Looking over what I’ve written so far, what sticks out is that these near disasters were all over very trivial matters, where the benefit was a matter of a simple pleasure or convenience. I like to think that I’ve learned to do without such risks, but I couldn’t swear that that’s the case. I now recall a time when I ran to the aide of a lone man being attacked by about 5 others. That might have gone badly but didn’t: the group dispersed after a few seconds and I was only a bit bruised – and the victim was very grateful. I’m glad that not all my dangerous risk-taking was over nonsense.

              But when it comes to the big things – love, friendship, values, meaningful achievement – I hope that I might still learn to be bolder. I hope to become freer of fears and doubt of all kinds. Because I truly believe that when we move forward with confidence and with heart and mind focused on good outcomes, we make them more likely, and we make the negative outcomes we would fear less so.

And I don’t think that this is simple optimism. Our outlook orients us, aligns our vision and our energies to respond to what we anticipate. When we expect, or even simply prepare ourselves for what we fear, we are more likely to see it, and to miss everything else. And similarly, if we expect what we desire and are prepared for it, we are positioned to respond to its merest manifestation, and to ignore the seedlings of disaster that may be just as present.

I’m not suggesting that anyone abandon reasonable forethought and planning. But in a world where every moment brings with it almost limitless possibility, it’s so easy to be stalled, discouraged or stopped by all the things that may go wrong, that we can’t possibly prepare for. I’m not literally advocating Leaping without Looking. But I am advocating – for myself anyway – the avoidance of the kind of over-preparation that seeks to eliminate risk by having a remedy for every concern. Better to go forward with confidence and hope and know that these same moments will likely offer unforeseen possibilities as well. I like to think, and I choose to believe, that there are always as many doors opening as there are closing. And in Life, I think that every journey will carry us to a place we cannot fully imagine.

This is the outlook that I will be actively cultivating in myself.