When it comes to taking risks I hold a strange mixture of attitudes. When I’m faced with the task of selecting an institution to look after my savings I’m definitely chicken. I want my money to be there …. all of it …. whenever I need it. I’m certainly not an adventurous investor. “Speculate to accumulate” is not for me. On the other hand, I get my exercise rock-climbing, the very prospect of which terrifies some people. Today I had to learn a new procedure on the computer, and had to cling desperately to the instructions, terrified of the nameless lurking disasters that would befall me if I got it wrong. Then I took responsibility for tonight’s dinner, and when it comes to the kitchen I just love to experiment …. find out what’s in the fridge and see what I can do with it. Some forms of risk can be personally annihilating, whereas others turn out to be opportunities for growth and self-discovery.
I was thinking about this over dinner tonight. Although I have been aware for a long time of various episodes in my wife’s life I really didn’t have a secure grasp of how they fitted together in time, so I asks her. It was an interesting experience, because I didn’t just get a recitation of events along some time-line, but an impassioned outpouring of the things that had formed her adult experience. The story covered her late entry into higher education, discoveries in reading, the decision to change her job, the end of her former marriage. It all sounded pretty risky, but having confronted these risks what an amazing person she has become! (I suppose that throwing in her lot with me must have been a pretty big risk, but we didn’t go into that on this occasion.)
It put me in mind of the occasions in my own life when there has been a definite burning of boats. I changed my degree course in mid-stream, for example; emigrated to Canada; switched my teaching job to join an entirely new and experimental venture; chucked up the university in order to paint. Then, of course, there have been episodes in my marital life that have required a definite leap of faith. Looking back, I reckon that my attitude to life has been closer to rock-climbing than to saving, and I think that the risk-taking has paid off.
The news bulletins at the moment are full of dreadful stories of the flood of migrants attempting to escape from various forms of insecurity, danger and poverty in Africa and the Middle East, and to make their way by any means possible to some European country. No risk I have ever taken has been remotely comparable to that. I am not sure whether to be more impressed by those whose risk pays off, or by the dreadful fate of the many whose risk-taking ends in disaster and death. There is a definite tendency in the news media to represent these people as a kind of latter-day Egyptian plague …. alien, threatening, potentially destructive. I have no doubt that a coordinated European response is required to deal with this situation, but beyond the general causes and institutional frameworks, I see the human risk-takers and respect their courage.
Tomorrow I travel down to London for the day, primarily in order to see a couple of exhibitions. I’ll probably have to write tomorrow’s post on the returning train. There is supposed to be free wi-fi. Let’s hope so.