Taking Risks at the Bookies

I was walking past a Bookies the other day, and I saw a guy walk in to place a bet, but, before he went in he locked his busted-up bicycle up to the railing.

I thought this was a great example of the often-contradictory ways we approach risks.

The same man that was going in to the bookies to hand over his hard earned money, in the hope of his proverbial horse coming in; locked up his bicycle securely to the railings. Losing his bike was obviously a risk he didn't want to take.

This is conjecture, but, there is a good chance that he spends more money gambling on horses, than it would cost to replace the rickety bicycle he locked up; and probably a few times over.

The thought it provoked was about how we often deal with risks in different ways. There are risks we feel that are acceptable, and there are often risks that we take in our lives that reveal hidden contradictions that we would probably prefer to ignore.

We are all gamblers. We are all doing secret little exchanges. These exchanges involve the trading of risks.

Imagine someone, anyone, and imagine that they are interested in doing something new, but are afraid of causing upset to some one they care deeply about. This person risks not discovering their own personal satisfaction, and instead, risks living constantly in that fragile, thinly iced world, where they feel like a prisoner to the feelings of parents or partners.

Imagine someone, anyone, who feels something very strongly about a relationship they are in, but is terrified of rocking the boat, and upsetting the status-quo if they revealed what they really felt to those around them. This person risks not living openly as they are, and instead risks living a life of masks and window dressing.

Do you see what I am getting at?

I am not suggesting that we all go bungy-jumping and backpacking around the world. But, I am suggesting that if bungy-jumping and backpacking are something you have always wanted to do, but you have been afraid of what other people will think, then you might want to reconsider the exchange of risks.

Maybe you want to go work with Orangutans in Borneo. Maybe you want to become an investigative journalist, writing stories that mean something to you. Maybe you want to go dig wells to provide people with uncontaminated drinking water. Maybe you want to quit the job that has been sucking your soul dry for far too long, and try working for yourself. Maybe you want to go see the world. Maybe you want to ask that person out on a date, that person who makes your heart beat faster every time you see each other. Maybe you want to reveal what you really think, and what you really feel to the people you care about. Maybe there is a relationship that is fractured that you would love to heal.

I am not saying that there is any guaranteed outcome to any of these ventures. They are indeed, all ventures, and they are indeed all risks, but, in the exchange of risks, we may want to look at what it is we are risking in return for maintaining the status-quo; what we are risking for maintaining our habits.

Let's not risk living an unsatisfying life. We only have one.

Paralysing Plethora of Paths

We all have paths that lie in front of us. Of course, there are paths that don’t lie in front of us too. There is no single person alive that has all the possibilities in the world in front of them. Due to circumstances and genetics, body and psyche, and all sorts of other things…our paths have already been whittled down.

This is a good thing, and a useful thing, for the full gamut of possibilities would simply paralyse every single one of us. We wouldn’t be able to decide what to do. Some people fantasise about winning the lottery, as if, having lots of money, would bring the equivalent amount of possibility. Yet, the money and the possibilities don’t make it any easier to start a journey along a path.

In fact, I reckon, that the more possibilities we have, the more unhappy we become. One of the things humans deal with the worst in life is indecision. It seems that having a plethora of options is not congenial to the human temperament.

Some people genuinely don’t have clue what they want, and no sense of direction as to where to go, and what road to head out on. For them, attempting to choose might feel incredibly daunting, and induce the paralysis experienced by those who have too many options. These mapless ones have to make do with winging it, venturing down unknown paths. At best, these sojourners can learn to be pragmatic, willing to change and reassess at any given moment. For them, the road can be neither good nor bad, just preferable or not.

However, some of us have already begun on our journeys toward our satisfaction. We know all too well the path that lies in front of us; yet, we get scared from time to time. The further up the path we travel, the more scared we get, even though this is the journey we wanted and we chose. We falter. We stumble. We hanker after that place that lies behind us, as terrible as it is…that place where there is an abundance of possibility. We fantasise about a return to that no-man’s land where we have not chosen anything. We want to return to the crossroads.

When we start journeying toward our satisfaction, we often have to confront the dew of our dreams. When we have lived in the no-man’s land between the fantasy and the fear…the journey that will teach us about our capabilities and our limitations, threatens to disillusion us. This is why, even as we journey along paths we have very-much chosen, we may desire to return to the crossroads. We would often, rather keep our fantasies and dreams, as just that. We may be afraid that the actuality of the thing we longed for, might actually just be ordinary…just a different kind of ordinary. Not amazing…but a rich kind of ordinary.

But, maybe that is the thing we are most afraid of finding, at the end of the road.

Shooting Yourself in the Foot

When the rain comes on, hard and heavy, we pull our hoods up, or we pop open our umbrellas. But have you ever noticed, how, once inside those protective little worlds, how oblivious people tend to become? You can witness the hooded-ones walking out in front of cars. With their vision restricted, they don't have the same view of the real dangers. We all know far too well, to watch you don't get your eyes gouged out, when the umbrellas go up in the rain. The people that wield these eye pluckers, seem to be in another world, slightly more removed from the general reality outside of their portable shelters.

This isn't just a word of caution to you, to be careful when you are walking with your hood up, or when you are wielding an eye-plucking umbrella. Although, it is that too. But, the observation I really want to make is this:

Life rains down on us. It just does. It is not for us or against us, it just does its thing regardless. From the day we are born to the day we die, we live through sunshine and showers, heatwaves and storms, but, when life rains down on us, we tend to put up protective shelters. We put up our psychological hoods, and our mental umbrellas, to shield ourselves.

But, let us bear in mind, that when we are protecting our self from something that we can't avoid, we often bring about hazards, that we can avoid.

We shield ourselves from the rain, and get knocked down by a car.

There are many ways in which we exhibit this behaviour. Maybe you will recognise it in yourself. I know I have seen in myself many times. Sadly, it seems, that we often continue to keep up our hoods and umbrellas, even after the rain has stopped. With hoods up, we can end up isolating ourselves from contact with those around us, with our umbrellas swinging around, we may push people away, who understandably want to keep a safe distance. 

These coping strategies and defence mechanisms are usually pragmatically glued together at a time when we were much more vulnerable, and more at the mercy of the others in our lives. There were feelings that we never wanted to feel again. We did the best with what we had at the time, and cobbled together makeshift defences. But, as we grow older, we sometimes forget to see that we are no longer so vulnerable. We have our own power. We can stand our ground and we can grow. We may also realise that many of these strategies, not only do not work anymore, but may actually bring about the very thing we are trying to protect ourselves from. Or, the protective behaviour that we are using, to hedge ourselves from particular difficult feelings, may have worse repercussions than the difficult feeling would be on its own.

This is also known as shooting yourself in the foot.

It might be time to sit down and reassess what we are afraid of, what we are doing with that fear, and become aware of what the side effects of that behaviour are. As we all know, so many of the 'medicines' we take to make us well, have lists of side effects that are worse than the ailment we are trying to rid ourselves of.

Caviar Monkeys

If I were a monkey

who had been fed on caviar

for the first few years of my life

I could end up

spending the rest of a short life

holding out for caviar

refusing to find sustenance elsewhere

or I could learn to palate

other more humble flavours

from other sustaining foods

that would help me survive

and the reality is

that those more humble

maybe even mundane foods

would provide better nutrition for me

me, the little monkey

with a penchant for caviar

the luxurious foods

would have long term ill-effects

and I think this is the case

with significance

for this is the thing we are fed

in our early formative years

and we can end up hankering

after continued significance

starving ourselves

of the ordinary satisfactions

that initially taste too bland

even, too repulsive to stomach

and we get the gag reflex

because something in our mind

has already chosen the repulsion

and has us gagging

and so, we hanker for the luxury and starve

or
we learn to live more ordinary lives

Better the Devil you Know

The essential difference between an escape and a distraction is to do with location. With an escape, you go somewhere else, but, with a distraction you stay right there where you are.

Many people that think they are escaping, are simply engaging in the act of distracting. This is so, because, there are no easy ways out. There are no get-out-of-jail-free cards in life outside the illusion. In a world where the jails, are the lives we have created and maintained for ourselves, and the bars of the cell are our behaviours...freedom can only exist in change of habit.

With a distraction, we don't go anywhere, we just whirl stuff around in front of ourselves to take our focus off where we are standing. As soon as the distraction has lost its momentum, we get the dawning realisation about where we are, and see that we haven't budged an inch, and start feeling anxious and hungry for another distraction.

We might call our distractions 'escapes', hoping to convince ourselves that we have gone somewhere else altogether different, when this is rarely the case.

In the movie Collateral, Jamie Foxx's character in the movie, is a taxi driver who has fooled himself into thinking he is escaping his life-as-it-is, when actually he is hooked on his life-as-it-is. His behaviours are so fixed and unchanging, that he appeases himself by staring at a postcard of a sunny destination. This is a destination he will never arrive at because he is distracting himself. Distracting himself enough, so that he can avoid the difficult and daunting movement that freedom necessitates.

But, what is he, and what am I, and what are we distracting ourselves from?

Change

Terrorised by the devil we don't know

People don't want freedom, they want comfort

Or, at least, they want both,

and for the most part

will sell their freedom in exchange

for the subtle lure of comfort

and true escape and true change

will only come

when we put freedom over comfort

when the devil we know

is killing us slowly with boredom

maybe its time to take a ride

with the devil we don't know

Lest we Forget

We get together and remember

our tragedies and our losses.

communites large or small

sharing its grief or disbelief

and we say,

it is good to remember

lest we forget

and we remember

our wars, holocausts and genocides

and we maybe hope

that by remembering

we will prevent these

horrifying acts

from ever happening again

but,

how do we remember,

and

what exactly are we remembering?

I ask these questions

because I think we can insulate ourselves

from the realities of

what humanity has proven itself to be

by remembering

with a sense of disbelief

we can keep ourselves separate

from the vile evil-doers

as if they were born of hell

and we were born of heaven

we can remember

in a way that helps us

keep a mythology

about human progress

intact, and unedited

this kind of remembering

keeps ourselves

lost in a little mist of innocence

where we stay

baffled and bemused

by the acts of others

and we would far rather

stay that way

than find out

that all those

perpetrators and victims

were ordinary people

like you and me

that fell either side

of that all too fine line

that any one of us

could find ourselves

on the wrong side of

but, isn't that is too close for comfort?

so lets forget

lest we remember

Fixing the Leaks

I think that we oftentimes convince ourselves that avoiding things is easy, as if to avoid the difficult and the challenging, were to embrace the stress-free life. Some have become so used to avoiding things, that they call themselves lazy, as if this behaviour has become a part of their identity. We may even come up with clever meaningful stories about why we don't do particular things. We can avoid things for all sorts of reasons. It can be from lack of self-belief, fear of failure, or addiction to established comfort zones, or any number of self-created, superstitious, narcissistic narratives. However, it is erroneous to think that the avoidance is easy, and energy-saving.

Avoiding things is an action. It has a hidden intentionality behind it. It is a repackaged resistance. It drains energy in hidden ways, that will leave us lethargic and apathetic. It steals the energy that we could otherwise be putting into addressing our fears, and steals the opportunity of finding a truly personal fulfillment. Personal fulfillment, can only come through challenging our fears, and expending energy in that general direction. Our fears communicate to us what matters to us. Fear is the field in which our treasure is buried. We can leave it there and never find it if we so wish.

Avoidance is resistance. Resistance expends energy, but it is a use of energy that is like a leak in the system. It drains away under the surface, and you lose the energy you need for things that might be important, significant or meaningful to you.

If we are not putting ourselves to things, if we are not challenging ourselves in some way or other, or if we are avoiding the things we fear, we will end up with lives that feel stagnant, repetitive, mediocre, empty, boring, meaningless and without worth.

We can not expect to have lives that feel meaningful and significant, if we do not channel our energies into tasks, if we do not challenge ourselves, if we do not take some risks.

Things...what are those things...those things we avoid? A broken relationship? A risky vocational venture? Being truly ourselves with others? The better life?

Fix the leaks, divert your limited energies, direct them toward living the fullest life you can muster, in this blip of time we call life. Not because we must, not because we are obliged to, not because of what others might think, and not because it matters; just because you might feel alive again, and we all know, even if only from distant memory, that that feels good.