I started reading “The Walk” by Richard Paul Evans on the recommendation of a blogger Monique Catoggio.  (Very cool! She’s the only other blogger I’ve met face-to-face.  Click here  to see her Being Enpointe blog post on The Walk.)

A few lines out of it’s prologue really  struck me.  The main character Alan Christoffersen  a widower says:

It’s better to be loved by one person who knows your soul than millions who don’t even know your phone number.  I have loved and have been loved as deeply as a man can hope for, which makes me a lucky man.  It also means that I have suffered.  Life has taught me that to fly, you must first accept the possibility of falling.

I’ve been fortunate like him to have known love personally.  My wife and I recently celebrated our 25^th wedding anniversary.  We’ve been together since high school and have shared so much happiness and good times as a part of our relationship.  We have also shared some difficulties and imposed on each other some serious pain and suffering. 

If life was like the stuff you see on TV, you’d think there were only good times in a good relationship.  I think NOT.  My wife and I have gone through stuff that that led us to the point of a breakup and I think we have a good one going here.  We have a strong marriage.

 Lesson learned:  You can’t get the good part without the bad stuff.

Consider:

• any personal relationship,
• a career,
• a business venture,  
• the national economy,
• politics,
• raising kids,
• whatever.

No matter what topic you find, if you investigate it fully you’ll discover this up and down thing.  The natural and not so natural world are all bound by these cycles.   You can’t escape it.

Interestingly enough, things that are down will usually stay down.   Planes that don’t turn on their engines and head on down the runway never have to worry about crash landings.  Boats on a dock avoid the knocking around they get on the high seas.  Both of these stay safe, but the view from the airplane hangar and the boat dock can get old.  Worse yet, you never get a chance to see all there is to see.

Here’s where my heads at when I go over topics like this.  A lot of us like the safer route.  This approach feels more secure, but it robs us of opportunities.  If you stay safe and duck your head so you’re nice and safe, the opportunities seem to pass you by.
But just like the boat that stays safely tied to the dock, you never get to know what you don’t know.  Experience can only be gained by doing stuff and anything worth doing is worth doing wrong a few times before you get the hang of it.

I see it all the time – people who hang onto a bad job taking all sorts of abuse only because the thought of not having the paycheck completely freaks them out.  I’m not recommending anything reckless, but not looking when the current job isn’t working for you is bad thinking.

How about people that stay in jobs when they know darn well they can’t stand getting up in the morning to go to work?  The people that work with them may not even have a clue they’re unhappy.  They continue giving them raises and pats on the back.  The biggest favor they can do them is to let them go and force them to find a job they can love.

I started off talking about relationships and I have to say people matter so much more that jobs.   Note:  You are a people.  You own that relationship and you matter. 

Take on some risk – some risk that’s beyond where you feel comfortable.  Take the plunge and do it.  You won’t likely regret it.  And if you do regret, drop me a line.  I’ll probably start talking about how much stronger and smarter you are for having gone through it. 

Either way.  Hope this helps.