Pleasure in Risk

For a second, I want you to think about that precise moment when you realized you had a crush on someone. It's a simple thing, but in so many ways, it alters your perceptions. You're suddenly more hopeful about life, maybe more fearful. The object of your crush takes a closer to place to being the center of your stage. You see potential for this to go in so many directions. It's the possible start of something. It's a moment when you really know you're alive.

Realizing you have a crush doesn't always turn out to be a Big Life Altering Event. Sometimes it leads to heartache. Sometimes it leads to nothing. Sometimes it leads to little stabs of pain every time this person talks about someone else. Sometimes it just leads to wistful thoughts that lull you to sleep at night.  No matter the final destination of the crush, they all originate in the same place. They all start out in that blissful shiny sparkly moment when you know you like this person. LIKE like.

Crush moments are touchstones. They take us out of our insulated minds and create some kind of psychic contact with another person. We find ourselves watching them, smiling when they speak, hanging on their every word, and being quite interested in what is happening to them. For a while, we're outside our bubble. It's a risky place to be. After all, we will more than likely face pain at the end of this.

Crushes aren't practical, but I think they are primal. In fact, I think part of our biological makeup involves savoring a certain level of pleasure when we take risks. We only advanced because of the risk takers, the trail blazers, the brave ones. At some point, some girl decided she should eat a mushroom to see if it was good. Or, you know, she conned one of her friends into eating it. Either way, a risk was taken.

If the thought of finding pleasure in risk taking seems foreign or unacceptable to you, you're not alone. In fact, most of my life, I was the same way. Most of the time I still am. I don't even like to carry the eggs into the house because I might break them.

On reflection though, I'm not sure I want to be that way. I would like to find the path back to being someone who finds pleasure in risk. I would like to be happy when I enter a contest or venture to talk to someone new. I don't want to just be rooted in place by fears and doubt and anxiety. I want to be someone who views attempt and knowledge as far more valuable than immobility until assurance of success.

To be honest, I'm not sure how to achieve this. It's going to involve years undoing the habits and thought patterns that lead to minimizing risks. It's also going to involve me . . . being brave . . . acting before analyzing . . . trusting myself . . . having faith in my instincts. I'm kind of not practiced at any of that.

Then again, I've been altering a lot of my patterns of behavior. Perhaps the best way to learn to be the brave person is just to do it the same way I have learned to be the physically active person. Start out slow and small, build on that. Savor my victories, learn what I can from my defeats, and keep my goals in mind.

This topic will be revisited from time to time.