May 2012
There was a
medium-sized tree in Kings Park, Perth, in which my friends and I would play.
This was a commodious cypress type of tree with thick layers of branches from
the top right down to ground level. We’d climb to the top and throw ourselves
over, relaxing into a controlled fall as each branch would catch us and drop us
to the next branch, and so on to the bottom. It was wonderful.
I can still smell in
my mind’s nostrils the resinous quality of branch and twig and the stickiness
that remained on the hands long after we’d gone home. My body also retains the sensation of the slow supported
fall. It is an incredible feeling, this body memory and one that has become
something a metaphor for me as I look upon the subject of risk.
Risk is a chosen
action where the outcome is unknown.
Dropping from the top branch of the tree was an act of faith each time,
because though we could do the fall over and over, we never quite knew whether
we’d catch the branches in a safe way every time. Maybe we’d drop straight to
the ground, maybe we’d be all right. Who could really know?
Allowing ourselves to
partake of risk, allowed us to know life exquisitely. The Brazilian mystical
author, Paulo Coelho describes it this way, “You have to take risks. We will
only understand the miracle of life fully when we allow the unexpected to
happen.”
Too often we tremble
at the edge of existence, too scared to choose, too scared to do anything. So we repeat the same tired old formulas
over and over, even though the circumstances that gave rise to them years ago
are no longer relevant. I’m
thinking of a man who I once saw who would not take a holiday from work even
though he was completely worn out, to the degree that he was physically ill.
Turned out that when he was a child his father had been injured in a war zone
and was largely bedridden until death, and mother wasn’t coping. Sometimes she
could help; sometimes she just took off. The
only child, the boy felt he had to hold it all together. So set the pattern of
never allowing himself rest – even long after that difficult childhood, even
though his life situation was completely different. He now lived comfortably,
with his own grown up family, and a business that employed lots of other people
who could run it well without him always present. Yet he still could not let go
of his anxiety, he never rested. His family were exasperated. He’d sent them on
holiday regularly each year, but always stayed at home to look after the
business. What if something happened when he was not there? It was ironical
that he could take risks with his business, but not with this essential thing
of allowing rest. It was killing him.
As time goes on the
old patterns of dealing with the world get encrusted like an old car battery
that hasn’t been cleaned. Gunk just accumulates around the vital connections
and we lose our wherewithal to act freshly and decisively. Just the thought of
doing something new, to leap into the rich field of unknown possibilities feels
constrained by a mounting list of imagined things that can go wrong. What if?
“We will only
understand the miracle of life fully when we allow the unexpected to happen.”
Accompanying every act of life is the possibility of annihilation. The spectre
of death is always present, a figure that brings all the more shimmer to life.
What if the leap ends
in stars? Concussion, magic, entrance into an entranced state, paralysis,
crippledom, surprise, wow!, feeling incredibly, vitally alive? What if the leap
is beautifully supported all the way to the ground, like the cypress tree of my
youth? Who knows! Life is risk. The
very nature of life can hand out anything – and does. Plunge into it.
