I’ve never been one to take risks.
As a 20-year-old, I am relatively inexperienced in the world. Coming to college was the first time I left my hometown bubble and interacted with people outside of the life I had known for the first 18 years of my existence.
Experiencing a completely new set of people, situations, and interpersonal dynamics was utterly terrifying.
For a while, I allowed those overwhelming factors to impede everything I did. They prevented me from joining clubs, making friends, going out, and having fun in general. I felt miserable and constantly asked myself, “What am I missing here?”
Then, one day, after a long evening of listening to angry pop-punk music and trying not to scream, I made a freeing discovery: I wasn’t actually living.
There is a huge difference between being alive and living. Being alive defines the continuation of your bodily functions, but living characterizes experience.
After coming to this conclusion, I decided that there was only one way for me to experience everything I could and truly live, and that was through taking risks.
You’d think risk-taking would already be a part of my impulsive nature, but it turned out to be the opposite. Risks are scary; that’s what makes them risks. I was petrified of experiencing anything new or different, for fear of the unknown and its undeterminable outcome.
But risks are just choices. And what is life but a series of choices?
I started weighing my options equally. Instead of determining their magnitude by which was more or less familiar, I gave them all the same worth. For example, if you had to choose between sharing how you truly felt and not saying anything, divulging your innermost thoughts seems riskier.
I now base my decisions on which choice I will have less regret for.
So, in the above example, I feel as though I would more regret for not sharing how I genuinely felt, because who knows what it could lead to? Nothing would have happened if I hadn’t said anything at all.
And sure, it’s scary. “What if I make the wrong choice?” Well, is a choice ever really wrong?
You made a choice, just like any other, equally weighted. So, you move on and make a different choice the next time. It’s as easy as that.
I don’t want to live life without experiencing it. Too often we spend our time working for the future: working for college, working for a job, working for retirement. With all that time working, when do we get to live?
I’m not saying it’s bad to prepare for the future, but I am saying that there are three different tenses and the future is only one of them.
Say what you feel. Do what you want to. Be who you want to be. Experience anything, everything.
Take risks.