Dip Your Toes in the Ocean

Sometimes I like to pretend I got to have a do over as a child.  You know, have that red bike instead of the blue.  Maybe saved up chore money a little bit longer to afford the bigger super soaker to blast my neighbors with.

It is a long, slippery slope, though, and I soon have to come back to reality before I'm sifting through the millions of variables that would have changed over the course of a single year.

It is interesting, then, whenever someone I come into contact with can just make actions and stick with them.  I try to do that, and I have done that to quite a good deal of success, but to live like that... to live like that is something very admirable to me.

It always seems as though those people are happiest as well.  Being able to take in the moment for everything it is worth, being able to throw consequences to the side and say, "this is what I'm doing and to Hell with the rest of it."  It is beautiful in a way.  Perhaps one of the most beautiful things a person can see in another.

I often times from myself at odds with people like that, however.  Well, not always, but the majority of the time.  What happens, then, when someone finds a healthy balance between that fun loving nature of being in the now and being able to balance consequences of actions?

I'd like to imagine it would go a little something like this - things still stay exciting to them, and when making the choices they make they still make the better of the choices at hand.  Meaning, just because they expose themselves to greater risks doesn't mean they are actually in any more of a dangerous scenario.

A person can die doing the exact same thing every day as easily as a person can die jumping out of an airplane, provided proper attention to detail has been given to preparations for the sky diving excursion, but is it really a life worth living if everything becomes so stale that the very air being breathed in feels more like poison?

And the opposite, of course, is true.  Someone who takes no precautions in their actions can run a pretty severe risk of ruining their lives with bad choices.

One might argue that so long as someone is breathing then their life hasn't been ruined, which of course is a fair assessment.  Where someone desires something strongly enough, things can change for the better at any given point.

Perhaps, then, everyone should take more risks in their lives.  Feel that fresh air.  Let the turbulence shake you up a bit.  Let the waves crash upon your chest.  Just be smart about it.

-Dustin S. Stover