Taking risks doesn’t mean succeeding every time, and that’s okay! Taking risks can lead to failure which in turn can help you grow as a person.
Many of life’s best achievements require going outside of your comfort zone. Our current Mayor of Whitewater Region is a great example. He took a chance four years ago, was elected as a councillor and after this election is now the chair of council. Another ex-councillor after eight years of quiescence was elected again and is keener than ever. Council has a member who as a newspaper editor for years stepped out of the shadows to be directly in the drama rather than reporting it. There are others who took similar risks.
A few years ago I took a big risk and volunteered for roles in a couple of comedy shows at the Westmeath Community Hall. I got through them but not without blowing a few key lines. That’s all right – I got over the negative comments and would like to do it again given the opportunity. In other words l matured from those experiences of crossing the line of peril which wasn’t easy.
At the age of twenty a friend and I headed for Florida hitchhiking with our fold-up sign “Florida or Bust.” It was a not-so-well thought out plan as many parts went gee-haw. We finally made it but not as anticipated. Two situations that couldn’t happen in Canada bothers me to this very day. After the bus pulled into the terminal at Atlanta I apparently entered the wrong washroom. No, It wasn’t the women’s, it was for ‘Blacks only” (which I could not comprehend at that time). I was sternly told to leave by the cleaner, (….to avoid trouble). This the first time I had ever encountered racism or understood what the word meant or why it was needed!
The second one was on the bus trip to Atlanta at a regular stop when a white lady with a black baby was denied permission from the restaurant to warm her baby bottle. She returned to the bus with bruised feelings and feeling disheartened. My friend stood up without an ounce of fear, asked for that same baby bottle, went into the restaurant, had it warmed and brought it back to the lady with the baby. She was so grateful. A busload of passengers were also.
Since that eye-opening trip I have practiced treating everyone as an equal. I’ve had Blacks, Orientals, Asians, Jewish, Muslims and Aboriginal friends in my house,
and enjoyed every visit. My son’s best friends in high school were Jamaican, Jewish, Spanish and Greek. We nicknamed our Scarborough house “TUN” (The United Nations).
However, many of us have a difficult time dealing with the uncertainty that goes along with taking risks. A feeling of unease grows out of not knowing the outcome and the fear of potential failure. Probably that includes whether to push a relationship along or bow out gracefully.
That was the very dilemma Sheila and I were in about a dozen years ago. We had been good friends since public school and were now unattached, living alone in our own houses. We met at the WPS 100th year reunion in 2006 and things gradually heated up from there. Although we had different personalities, I saw her as a potential mate: she not so sure. One advantage was that we shared the same experiences of growing up in Westmeath – a good foundation to start on. It turned out we both wanted to settle down and we chose each other. “What if” we hadn’t taken that risk. We went into it without a thought of it failing. Our different interests, hers being cats and gardening, mine socializing but whenever problems or illness arose we had each other’s backs.
I really like the story of Abraham Lincoln, who lost eight elections, failed twice in business, and suffered a nervous breakdown all before becoming one of the greatest American presidents. Through these failure’s, he built the persistence necessary to later lead his country through one of its toughest periods in history. Was it because he experienced so many failures himself but didn’t give up?
