Rut

This is my last week at the Department on Disability Services.  I have worked here for seven years, which the longest I have ever worked at a single job.  I feel weird and anxious.  But I can't imagine living a life without these moments of borderline fear/excitement.  As they say, a life without taking risks is a boring life.  Actually, I just made that up.  But there is a catchy, insightful phrase I heard once about people who take risks versus those that don't  I don't remember how it goes, but I recall not wanting to be the guy who's afraid to take risks.  Failure is an option, yes, but what if I had never tried peanut butter on waffles? I would never know how delicious it is.  Or what if I gave up on Lynette after her initial rebukes to date me?  The thought scares the heck out of me.

Sometimes we get so comfortable in our worlds that we shun the alternative possibilities.  In Plato's Allegory of the Cave two men are born into and chained in a dark cave.  The only reality they know are the shadows flashing on the wall from a candle.  One day one of the prisoners escapes and discovers to his amazement that there is a whole world outside the cave.  When he came back to rescue the other prisoner he told him about the new world outside the cave.  However, the prisoner upon hearing about the "truth" of the outside world decides to kill him instead of escape.  Fear of the unknown was much stronger than his desire to begin a new life in a new world.  Remaining a prisoner was easier, because it was all he'd known.

I feel proud to have taken as many risks as I have in my life.  In retrospect, I wish I had taken more, but what's past is past.  I'm in the Looking Forward business.