The Risks We Take
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Being alive, truly alive, means taking risks every day.
I live around the corner from my church. One winter Sunday I drove to church because I was bringing a number of props for an intergenerational service. By car, I live about three minutes away.
That morning it snowed, and it kept on snowing, and it snowed some more. As I left the church, I wondered: “Would it be a good idea to leave the car in the lot and walk home?” It would have been, except for the fact that I chose to wear dress shoes that probably would have been as much help as wearing SPF 50 sunscreen on my feet as I walked through the snow.
So, I found myself driving home in the snow, something I hadn’t done until that day. My inexperience showed itself immediately as I slid out of the driveway onto the street, coming just four feet short of the overpass barrier. After that I thought it might be a good idea to drive slower and brake sooner.
It took another series of near misses and some fishtailing before I got my bearings, and then another 15 harrowing minutes before I arrived home.
All this is to say that every day we are presented with choices, and all of those choices involve some level of risk—to self, to others, to the community, to the planet, and so on. I had the choice of walking home and risking frostbitten toes or driving home and risking plummeting onto the train tracks. I chose the latter.
But in actuality, it was more than a choice of how to get home; it was a choice of how I would live my life. Am I going to take the most familiar, safest routes or will I open myself to new possibilities and new ways of doing things? Such untrodden paths might challenge me, reveal my inexperience, my biases, and expose the soft underbelly of my vulnerable, human self. But I think I might get a bit wiser in the process.
I encourage you to take risks every day. Risk loving, risk hoping, risk being courageous or spontaneous.
Risk living.
- The Risks We Take - June 1, 2014
