" You can't get anywhere unless you're willing to take a risk. The saying dates back to Chaucer (c. 1374) and is similar to the late fourteenth century French proverb: "Qui onques rien n'enprist riens n'achieva" (He who never undertook anything never achieved anything) The proverb was included in John Heyword's collection of proverbs in 1546. First cited in the United States in 'Letters and Papers of Cadwallader Colden . It takes varying forms: Nothing ventured, nothing lost, nothing ventured, nothing won, etc. ." - Gregory Y. Titelman (Random House, New York, 1996)
This may seem pretty trivial and obvious, but do most of us actually think about what it means for our everyday lives? Think about the way we live in North America everyday. We armor ourselves in safety gear for sports, and wear seat belts in cars, wear helmets on bicycles and motorbikes. These are regular safety precautions which do make sense because there's no reason why we should be careless and needlessly get hurt.
But there are safety measures which we regularly take which we don't really need to and even sometimes hurt us. Perhaps not physically, after all, we're always advised "better safe than sorry" when making decisions, and told to err on the side of caution. But when does that become misleading and harmful to our psyche? Not only does being too safe make life boring, but it can make us paranoid, panicky about coming in contact with strangers and perhaps even mentally unbalanced at times (A lady I knew when I was young used to make sure all her car doors were locked at all times while she was in her car so that no one could get in and kill her). We're taught from such a young age to not trust/talk to strangers and to never go out alone after dark. Some people are just taught not to ever go anywhere alone at any time of day or night. I used to go for hour-long walks with my dog, alone at night. I enjoyed the solitude. Being alone with my thoughts was nice. It helped me on the road to becoming the person I am today. But if I told friends that I did this, their response was to tell me I was crazy and that I could have got mugged, kidnapped, or raped.
When we are raised in an overprotective type of lifestyle it works against our own need for adventure, independence and learning about ourselves. We don't learn to use our instincts or take risks which are important factors of human developmental psychology. We are also primal creatures. We need to learn through trial and error. I believe walking with nature is a good place to learn these things. A couple of good examples of this are
- the story and film called Into the Wild. ( Based on a true story. After graduating from Emory University, top student and athlete Christopher McCandless abandoned his possessions, gave his entire $24,000 savings account to charity and hitchhiked to Alaska to live in the wilderness. Along the way, Christopher encounters a series of characters who shape his life.)
- the story and film called 127 Hours (A mountain climber, Aron Ralston's remarkable adventure to save himself after a fallen boulder crashes on his arm and traps him in an isolated canyon in Utah. Over the next five days Ralston examines his life and survives the elements to finally discover he has the courage and the wherewithal to extricate himself by any means necessary, scale a 65 foot wall and hike over eight miles before he can be rescued. Throughout his journey, Ralston recalls friends, lovers, family, and the two hikers he met before his accident. Will they be the last two people he ever had the chance to meet?)
Sure these two people took incredible - and some people might say incredibly stupid - risks to live out their adventures. However, they experienced things which most people never even know exist. They had passion and enjoyed the time they spent in nature immensely. These types of risks are exciting and make life worth living.
A very important aspect of this over protected type of society is what it does to our minds. We are taught fear of everything which is not familiar. How can anything foreign become familiar though when we're taught to fear everything outside of our comfort zones? That's exactly why we're taught this paradigm from infancy. If we're taught that risks are scary and they could hurt us and getting hurt is bad, we're never going to want to try something different. That's another method of manipulation which is used by *the man* to keep us suppressed and docile. We are television watching, GMO food eating, pointless job having zombies. And that's just the way society is designed.
Think about what you would like to accomplish in life and DO IT. Don't worry about society's perceptions regarding safety because you are a human and you have the mental, emotional, physical and spiritual power to accomplish what you really want to.
An article I came across previous to writing this post - Our Overprotected Society: Stamping Out the Unpredictable by Philip Slater
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