I’m bored. Let’s play a game. Would you rather…experience something that is quick and painful but is beyond your perceived boundaries or, something long and arduous (still painful) but percieved within your normal realm of ability?
To give you context to the hypothetical question: you’re a participant on the show the Amazing Race. You have a series of pit stops you have to go to along the way to a designated finish line in a foreign country and this is the dilemma you encounter. You have a pit stop where you could very well take the short cut but it be painful quick and possibly not something you can achieve or something that seems easier but takes you a long time.
I recently watched an episode where there was this pair of brothers that were in dead last on the Amazing Race. They had the option of doing an incredibly difficult task where they got to balance logs on their forehead or they could carry them up temple steps.
As I watched, glued to the boob tube, all I could think of as these incredibly chiseled cowboys strategized at the task of balancing several 20 foot beam poles on their forehead and walk 40 yards balancing the precarious log like flag poles across a finish line -- the task seemed virtually impossible. But together with sheer determination, teamwork and downright drive to brand something …errr…not quite sure what, perhaps, their opponents behinds, they finished the leg of the journey in 1st place.
Meanwhile every other team chose to carry a series of similar logs up the most crazy steps I’ve seen in a Buddhist temple. It took them a long time and what had seemed like less painful from the get go turned into a series of setbacks for everyone else. One person dry heaved. Others just couldn't handle it.
The end results from both decisions were unknown but what if one situation looks simpler from the outside looking in than the other situation. The rewards are unknown, the stakes are high. But one is perceived as easier. What would you do? What if the decision involved your emotions, in terms of pain or loss.
This hypothetical came to mind this week as I discussed some of the harder topics of life with close friends. If the known variable in a situation is pain than the general consensus from those I spoke with, our automatic response seems to be to not take the risk, to stay in the comfort zone of the supposedly known variables of life and try to avoid pain or anything that might rattle our emotions. But nothing is completely known. That’s not our place. Omniscience is one super power that does not belong to humankind.
The future is a mystery and will continue to be that way. And if we choose the road that’s most travelled, it is safe to say we are content in our ignorance of the unknown. (Where would the cowboys be if they hadn’t taken that risk.)
Like the Princess Bride wisely once said, "Life is pain. Anyone who is tries to tell you otherwise is trying to sell you something." It is inevitable in every situation. So why do we prefer to think that we fair better by trying to choose what seems easiest from the outside looking in. With high risk yields higher chances for greater rewards, return on investment from a financial perspective. How does this not apply with other variances of context to this hypothetical situation.
And if we don’t invest our lives in life, than how do we truly expect to live as we should? This post isn't necessarily supposed to answer any questions but spark them. One pitstop task is no better off than the other, it's just different. Are you willing to sacrifice, take risks? If so, what are you currently risking? Or avoiding?
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4 comments:
Hey Kels -
Great thoughts here. I saw this one come across my RSS Feed last week (oh, yeah, btw, I've got you on my RSS Feed now). I've chosen to take plenty of risks in life, but couldn't really generate any interesting thoughts at the time.
Over the weekend, however, I had an epiphany in my garage (AKA, my painting studio). I've been working on a piece off-and-on for about 1.5 yrs now (in between cold spells and the occasional brain surgery). The past few times I'd worked on it, I really had to grind out some tough technique work (as in, more work than hobby).
Finally, I'd reached a point, after hours of crafting this thing to a point of exquisite perfection, with everything looking exactly as I wanted it to, when I realized the next stage (water splashing from a fountain) would require some reckless abandon. Now, for you non-painters out there, water is a very tricky subject to paint; it's more energy and motion than form and color. Van Gogh was one of the first to just nail this concept dead-on, and Vincent I am not.
So, with great fear and trepidation, I started delicately painting in a few splash-drops, and it just flat out looked awful.
Finally, I'd had it, and just had to shout "(insert own expletive) with the caution! Just paint, Phil!" And, in a flurry of swirling paint on the pallette and splotching (yes, splotching) of various brushes on the backdrop of my Baby, I think I was able to capture something better than what I was initially aiming for.
Lesson: caution gets you what you can see, and is too often boring; throwing caution to the wind and just (as you said) "investing our lives in life," we might not get what we were shooting for, but will have a pretty awesome ride in the process.
And, really, isn't that the point of riding in the first place?
Hmm..that was really long. Maybe I should have just followed the lead of the sex website from the other comment :-)
Ya. I don't know how to get rid of those stupid comments permanently. I try to police it on a regular basis. Thoughts, suggestions?
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