Talking with @nonameslefttouse through a few comments about risk, security and the like, I was reminded about how even though for most of my life I have "played it safe" it hasn't stopped me being exposed to negative outcomes in my life, especially around illness. It also hasn't meant that I have had good outcomes, for instance financially, as that has been an issue too.
For me over the last several years, I have been trying to break from my relatively conservative approach to parts of life and explore them at more depth, which has been highly uncomfortable, but also rewarding. It has also come with a lot of failure and led to mess.
I have never been the person that wanted to be in the spotlight and I'd sooner walk away from drama than take part, but as a result, it has meant that I have missed opportunities to take because it all just seemed too hard to be involved, too difficult - not in my nature.
But what is my nature but the way I behave? And I am a human with the propensity to evolve myself in the directions I choose (at least to some degree), my nature can and will change, even if I don't choose to change it at all. This is because we are subject to our environment and no matter how much we fight or deny it, we are going to be influenced by our surroundings and the people we surround ourselves with.
My own cautions in life are likely born from my childhood and having to take responsibility for myself at a young age. If I wanted to eat, I would cook and if I wanted clean clothes, I would do the laundry. However, what this means is that from a very young age, I also understood the consequences of my decisions and without the backup or safety net children probably should have, it meant that it was easier to be conservative and risk-averse, because when something did go wrong, I knew I would be the one to have to sort it out, knowing I also didn't have the resources to absorb errors.
This was a good thing in many ways, but as said, it didn't help me avoid poor outcomes in life and when for example I got chronically ill at 16 years of age, it was far easier to take the "why me?" position, because I felt I didn't deserve it, as after all, I had done everything right and I had done most of it by myself in relatively adverse conditions. This had me questioning many things in my life, but still, I played it safe.
In many ways, playing it safe might be the riskiest thing to do, because it ends up being a "comfort position" and that comes from the familiar. This means it is far more likely to keep doing what was always done and even though it seeing worse results, there seems more risk in stepping outside of the comfort zone and trying something else.
So, there is a increasingly fast degradation that will force change and when change is forced, it is never met well, it is railed against, rejected, resisted - even though there is an inevitability to the outcome. The comfort zone is dead. But, have I ever been comfortable at all?
And this is the question to consider because while I think I have felt the comfort of living life on defaults, the conditions have rarely been comfortable, ironically, because of the default behaviors I applied to life. For example, I have always shied away from investing because felt I never had enough to put in and feared losing it. As a result, I never had enough to lose and my default was a hand to mouth existence that I suffered. While comfortable in behavior, I didn't enjoy the outcomes of my behavior at all. Yet, there I was frozen for literally decades.
Life is funny, isn't it? We think we have control and every decision is the best we can make at the time, but we really have very little influence over what we experience and most importantly, the changing environment in which we experience it. This means that optimization is impossible, because we do not know all of the conditions at any moment in time. So, me "playing it safe" was not that at all, it was me feeling like I was playing it safe - a trick of ego.
In reality though, despite my comfort in default behaviors, I was on the edge all the time, constantly moving without a safety net of any kind and when things did go wrong as they inevitably do, it would crush me down just a little more and that familiar feeling of "why me?" would arise - a useless position that will yield no answers, but make it harder to deal with the situations at hand.
I don't know when or why it changed or at least, I am not going to explore those right now at this point, but I am glad that I am willing to consciously take more risks, because I can then also consciously calculate them. This means that rather than being a passive passenger on the ride, I get the chance to learn a bit more and look over the edge before deciding to walk along its length.
Failure is still makes a constant appearance, but it doesn't come with the sense of it is undeserved, it is just a part of the process and a part of life that makes us consider what we are doing and whether, we should keep going or take another path.
There are so many paths through this life.
At the end of the day, does it matter how we get to the end?
Only to us as the individual perhaps.
Taraz
[ Gen1: Hive ]
Dude. Seems like we were just talking minutes ago, and you already wrote an article.
What did I do? Still waiting for the sun to rise. Made coffee. Drank coffee. Sat by the fire and stared at the flames. Some wake and bake. Didn't really sleep much to be honest. On and off again.
You're a thinking machine. But I was doing some thinking myself.
Where does this recklessness come from? Well I'm fucking bored. In life I inject chaos to find balance and create interest. Not really into routines and comfort zones make me uncomfortable. But the safety net exists (financially but in general as well) and that's the one thing I won't fuck with (risk). Crazy and chaotic, in the mix all the time, can't even help myself most days, just let it happen and deal with it. Consider it an accomplishment. I fucking survived another one.
Because the net is there. If I crash I'll be fine because I made damn sure to walk that thing and inspect every spring and rope and knot and everything else, like a preflight inspection. Then off I go on my next adventure.
Good times even in the bad times. And there's still a chance that net could break. I've hit bottom and somehow survived that shit, too.
It is not like it once was. My head is far more scattered.
Wy wife and daughter did similar... Though, it probably is a bit of a different thing.
(random internet image)
This is what I am working toward and while it is unlikely I will have it "in time" - maybe my daughter will benefit from it. A couple weeks ago I wrote an article about a friend who is looking at career paths and reasons why to do something. I take many paths, but the overarching goal is to build a safety net, so I can take some risks.
This is the lesson, isn't it? If you know you can survive bottom, where is the risk?
Yeah that's not the kind of baking I was talking about but, suddenly, and unsurprisingly, I sure am hungry.
I have two daughters, much older. Might be a grandfather before I'm 50 so yeah, a line that stuck with me ever since I heard it, "Happiness only real when shared." Chris McCandless said that. An interesting human.
Where is the risk? Well, I think, like a game, we only get so many lives. Can burn through a couple testing things out but eventually you get down to those last few, and that's when it's time to get down to brass tacks and finish the game.
Or like a bouncy ball. Eventually the momentum is lost. Of course people don't want that to happen but part of me thinks it's a universal law and applies to everything.
:D
The bouncy ball is the one that connects the most with me - the "universal law" of it sounds about right. Energy only stays in a form for so long, before it moves onto something else.
Yeah dude. Peaks and valleys, they say. After enough experience with struggles in life I'm starting to think there truly is no bottom. One is just in the moment, and it's shitty, but it could be worse; and I've experienced worse. Sure I could sit there and compare, find the shittiest of all, but they were all shitty, regardless.
Since there's no bottom, there's no top. Best day of my life was overpowered by, that other good day. Once again you're in the moment with plenty of room to go in either direction, regardless of standing.
It's strange though because if you think you're at the top, there's only one place to go and that's down. Think you're at the bottom, the only place to go is up. Moral of the story is: Never convince yourself you're done.
Can you tell I'm stoned?
No more than normal.
The "top and bottom" of life is interesting as, there really is neither, until the bitter end, or that glorious end - whichever way it goes. I assume that heaven is BS, because we are human and no matter how perfect it is, it'd never be perfect enough for us, meaning that it can't be heaven.
I think heaven is described as the opposite of jail, so be good or you're going to jail.
Don't need to die to experience the good life. That's all they're trying to say.
As for that final day, when those eyes close, man, you start dreaming.
Go to sleep at night, what happens? An entire world to explore inside your head, and no concept of time. I've lived entire weeks inside there only to wake up and it's twenty minutes later and I missed my show.
That final dream will feel like an eternity. Won't even know you're gone. And some people have nightmares, I guess.
BTW, thanks for being the trigger to reflect a bit :)
Wasn't the first time. Won't be the last.
Icicles. 😊
I saw many icicles like this when it snowed where I live two weeks ago. It was the first time in my life that I had seen such tall icicles. Climates are changing and we're starting to see things we don't usually see. !PIZZA
Oh, this is Finland so this could very well be taken during the middle of Summer! :D
Not really but it matters what we look back on, when we reach or near the end
and - I guess - by then it helps to know that you haven't just played it safe.
Nice personal story, as per usual :<)
I think this is something that raises the question - should I have done more with the life I had?
Who wants to have that question at the end?
Exactly my thoughts :<)
the comfort zone is such a bad place to be.. we should always strive to get out of it as stepping out of our comfort zone brings out the best of us in my opinion.
It is strange to think back through all of the years and see how much of it was me trying to do what was right, and getting it wrong :)
hindsight is one hell of a thing, I'll give you that! :D
Sure is :)
Some would call it destinty or lesson that you should get from life. However, I don't think so. This can be called just a luck. You didin't have good luck. Nevertheless, I think that having difficulity from the early ages, makes us much more mature. After all, there is a high possibilty for succes in life to come. This is what I experinced at least.
I agree, though it was interesting that in my early twenties, I found out a lot of people were scared to hang around me, because they thought I was too serious. The other side is that sometimes it leads to "childish" behavior later in life - kind of like trying to make up for the missed childhood.
As humans we are never perfect because we learn everyday by building ourselves to things that will be a comfort to us to live freely and happily.
Life itself is a risk because we can't predict what will happen in the next minutes so believing that your staying or playing safe is actually a risk, we should be mindful and careful of our actions towards taking decisions.
The reason we make the decisions is important too, because sometimes why we think we choose, and why we actually choose are quite different.
Well spending what $18,000 on Splinterland cards is certainly on the opposite side of caution these days, but it's good not to be too cautious you know? Rich people are people are Risk Takers. Not all of them, but ones that weren't born rich generally are.
Money is only one part of this. I wish it was only 18K :D
What I have learned through life is the fact taking learned/calculated/planned risk is the best thing you can do for your sanity. Being comfortable exists when you are not ambitious enough or when you think what you currently serves your purpose. For me, I am being ambitious in multiple ways. I am comfy with the job i have but being ambitious with my crypto engagement and new ideas.
This is something like I have at the moment, though I was just thinking, I seem to put an urgency on everything I do.... Maybe having a bit of a safety net will reduce that?
It is also about mindset, I think. Nothing is permanent when it comes salaried engagement. It is what we choose. For instance, my wife always complains that she is super busy and would enjoy days where she does not need to do anything. To be honest, she is most cranky and annoying when she has nothing to do. In that sense, putting urgency on everything you do could be your way of performing or addressing the risk you anticipate in your other job. For me, the new engagement is to satisfy my ego.
Thanks for this @tarazkp .
I have also been playing it safe, in a supposedly comfortable position that I have discovered to be not so comfortable.
That's fear of risks is extremely pronounced for me especially when it comes to money.
The question that comes to my mind is, if I loose this one, where would I get another one? .
But then I have discovered that as I grow and improve my value and worth, it becomes a lot easier for me to let go of money, because somehow, it comes back to me...it always does. And it doesn't come back alone, it usually comes with interest.
It is usually not obvious, but when I take inventory, I see that's always the case.