As one is about to turn 40, you can imagine that you spend a fair amount of time reflecting and taking inventory of your life. I read a lot about taking risks in the context of business and career on a frequent basis, and I've thought about whether or not I've really engaged in any significant risks. Mind you, there's a line between risk taking and being reckless and irresponsible, and I've definitely not done the latter.
Some people will argue that taking risks is living. Others will say the risk is itself the reward. Still others suggest that you can't truly be happy in life without taking some chances. There seems to be a cultural fascination with risk and how we associate it with how interesting our lives are.
As I look back, I can't really identify a lot of risk until the last four or five years. That's funny, because I've always felt that people become more risk averse, and generally rigid in their view of the world, as they get older. I think I've been the opposite. But should I have taken more chances ten to 20 years ago? That's hard to say.
In terms of relationships, I probably could have. If there was something to take away from the failure of my first marriage, beyond the problems we had, it was that we had no blueprint for what I wanted or needed in a relationships. It's hard to know what that is until you've dated a bunch and had enough self-awareness to know when you could be into something better. Between marriages, I finally gained this. It's where I learned that further dating for something that wasn't good enough was a bad idea. The risk of being alone or not in a relationship isn't a risk at all, it turns out.
Changing jobs I suppose incurs some risk, though for all of the startups and contract type of work, not a lot of it was by choice. Changing careers entirely was potentially risky, but that was only four years out of college, and frankly not that big of a deal.
Moving seems to be the thing that people are a lot more reluctant to do. When I was in college and thought I was going to be a big radio star (that was kind of stupid), I fully expected I would have to move where I had to move. But I didn't, and frankly wasn't motivated to go anywhere outside of Cleveland. I visited Portland in 1998, and thought it was amazing, to the extent that it was the first place I had ever been I'd consider moving to, but dropped the idea shortly thereafter.
I feel like the first time I really took a risk, I went big. With a pregnant wife, two unsold houses, a lot of credit card debt and virtually no useful knowledge about the destination city, I moved to Seattle. Honestly, that first six months there was a total blur. I think it was a year before I even came up for air and felt like I was taking meaningful control of my life. The risk was, for the most part, worth it. Nothing bad happened.
When I think about it in those terms, it seems to me that maybe it's not risk that we're really talking about. I mean, to me, risk implies you could lose something substantial in terms of money, relationships or even your life. It's not the risk that makes life "living," it's being open to the possibilities and acting on them.
Some people are content to live in the same place, be around the same people, doing the same job, for decades. I'm not saying that's bad, because if they're happy, I'm not one to judge. But what my move out west showed me was that the possibilities are actually pretty endless. Those possibilities could come with new adventures that enhance some part of your life.
In fact, the thing I realized was that the possibilities offer the potential to correct the things you're not happy with. For example, moving to Orlando can fix the unhappiness I experience when dealing with snow and winter. In terms of career, it might be more an issue of having more interesting work. And then there's the whole thing about living in a place where most people only vacation. I mean, what real "risk" is that? At worst, you have the same issues that get in the way of your happiness.
So I don't think you need to be a big risk taker to make life awesome, but you do have to look out for the possibilities that either aren't obvious or easy.
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