A good man once said, "play for more than you can afford to lose - this way, you'll learn the game".
Well, I was about 14 years old when I first heard this quote. Besides being a regular rebellious teenager, I suffered from a very high risk appetite already. One can only imagine the "inspirational" effect such a saying was likely to have on a guy with such a mindset.
Taking it literally to begin with, I force-landed in my next football match in a position I'd never played before - midfield (I was always a defender). I must admit I was pretty horrible at it - the guys in my team were ready to beat me up after I failed to set up some appalingly easy passes, and I immediately realised the value to sticking to what I knew best - defending.
Every ordinary person takes calculated risks, and conventional wisdom condones this. What we don't do, is taking risks that we can't afford to get the short end of...honestly, we don't take those chances in the real world. Or do we? I know of people who've quit their jobs to pursue their passion and have landed flat on their faces; they've lost all their money, a lot of their time, and confidence of other people in them. But what I've noticed about each and every one of these souls is that the spirit is intact. They've emerged wiser from their experiences, and will never make the same mistakes again (given the elusive chance, of course).
Therefore, rash as it may sound, taking a risk you can't afford can actually speed up one's learning process - what one learns from a risk that backfired, resulting in an unaffordable loss, is, I think, priceless.
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jai ho! sri sri karananand swami! here u come to conquer the world of preachings :D
ReplyDeleteThis is an extremely insightful article and makes one think abt how these quotations even the ancient ones maybe so relevant in our current lives. the one philosophy i swear by is "Don't get mad, get even" hahahahahahaha!
ReplyDeleteWhen is the next blog going to be posted? can hardly wait, swamiji :)
ReplyDeletelanded here at the behest of my dear friend Swati. wonderfully written, and i couldn't agree more! calculated risks are great to achieve calculated results. i think its that streak of freak, if i may - that makes one step outside of one's comfort zone, to ramp walk out of the rat race... that streak of freak is often the function of a long standing (and very rarely impulsive) wish to defy conformity, to explore life, to experience the random, of being human, of being the only race that can question things, know and act on multiple options.
ReplyDeletei think i'm digressing. but yes, the reward is often in exploring the unknown, and no one knows that what you were seeking is not the end but the pleasure of the game.
How true.
ReplyDeleteIf you always do what you've always done, you'll always remain where you've always been!
so the swamiji has jumped from horsing about to monkeying around!! good good, thats a positive step in evolution and a definite indication of learning from mistakes :)
ReplyDeleteI couldn't agree more on this. You can only know what you want when you have it, you can only know what you like to do , when u do it!