Risk It!

My friend Jenjen told me the other day, ‘take the risk girl!’ I thought to myself, should I? I feel like a rubber band being pulled into two sides. One tells me to go take the plunge, but the thought of falling into a deep ravine keeps coming into view that it makes me want to take the back seat instead.

I’m such a segurista. I always want to know the outcome before doing anything drastic. Being spontaneous with regards to decision making is definitely not my game. I still prefer sticking to the conventional way of picking through each detail, analyzing the pros and cons, thinking of other alternatives if there are any before taking the big jump. Yes the mind still rules over the heart here. It’s not easy though because one, you’re looking at a never-ending street with hundreds of possibilities running through your head every millisecond. Second, the mind sometimes eventually gives way to what the heart is saying, which makes it all the more complicated and confusing. Third, it’s always nearly impossible to guess the outcome of a decision with total precision. The tide can always change; sometimes as fast as kernels popping in the microwave. (Sorry, can’t think of a better analogy. Hehe) That’s why if you think about it, one can never be too much of a segurista as one would like to be. Whatever decision you make regardless whether how much thought you’ve given to it, it still somehow involves a certain level of risk. No matter how well-planned and how well-thought of a decision may be you can’t discount the possibility of the unknown and what-ifs lurking behind every decision you make. There are just two choices here, it’s deciding whether to remain in the status quo or to go out of your comfort zone and take a gamble with the possibility of losing everything.

And this is precisely why I seldom take risks. I understand this can never be a trial and error thing. There’s no turning back once a decision has been made. No one wants to be a failure and look like a fool, right? My status quo is already fine and dandy as it is, why still risk it? Why invest on emotions when you can get hurt in the end?

But what if (yes, the inevitable ‘what if’ again…), taking the risk is actually my passport to something even greater? Opportunities can be risks in disguise. So how now brown cow? Maybe it’s all about coming into terms with failing and looking like a fool. To a certain degree, I don’t think failure and looking like a fool can be so much of a bad thing anyway. If anything else, it actually helps us emerge as better persons, don’t you think? So maybe I should stop worrying about trying to be in control all the time and just embrace whatever fate may throw at me, even if it means having to look like a fool.