Yup, this is about a board game, but no, it’s not about Risk-the-world-domination-game. Just regular lowercase risk (which, if I were in charge, would definitely get to be uppercase).
I’ve not been very good at taking chances in my life—at least not with acceptance of the responsibility that comes with them. I’ve been more likely to fling myself into a risk, abandoning hope along with responsibility, than to consciously step into it. I get afraid and start thinking there's no other way to do things—I’m going to have to take a risk sometime, so it might as well be this one, and it might as well be now.
I hadn’t really realized the joy that comes from taking a calculated risk, and taking ownership of the gain as well as the loss that might come of it, until I played this game. (I'm shaking my head right along with you...but it's true! Hey, where you find a good thing, you go with it.)
It has nothing to do with actual cities, be they lost or found, but it does have a lot to do with making choices and taking leaps of chance. (Okay, maybe when they’re in a board game as opposed to real life they are more like skips or hops, but I am in remedial chance-taking training, so they feel rather large to me.)
In this game (like in many games, I guess, but also like in life), you have to make decisions based on the information you have at the time, without a knowledge of what the other player is going to do or what cards you’ll be dealt. You can risk big to win or lose big, or risk small to win or lose small. And you can’t spread yourself too thin—you have to choose what you’re going to pursue, and then pursue it.
I've only played this a couple times, but it was oddly thrilling. And it got me to thinking...
There’s something satisfying about being able to sit comfortably with the outcome of a decision, knowing that it was come by the only way it could've been. I think sometimes, when we look back and wonder if we made the right choices in life, we compress time and knowledge and the state of our hearts and try to overlay that point in time with all the perspective of this one. Sometimes that makes a difference; sometimes it doesn't. One of the most beautiful things to me now, though, is seeing the ways I shaped my life then with what I knew then. It wasn’t always pretty, but it was real, and I've learned from it. And that's pretty much all I can ask for.
3 comments:
i like the parallel of winning or losing big or small based on risk--and not being spread too thin. both of those are huge for me, in choosing exactly what i want to do and what i really don't have time for and in knowing that risking much the only way i want to live life. playing it safe and small wins just doesn't seem like the way to live.
still, i have a hard time with accepting that "learning from my choices" is sometimes going to be the best i will get out of them. it's almost like i hold myself to a high standard where that's not good enough for me. i know it should be, because i know i will make some wrong choices. i still just have a hard time with that.
I think you're right-- that last statement was a little too easy. I think learning from the wrong choices is good, but there's a benefit to them above the learning that's hard to articulate (and sometimes hard to find in the moment). I think the additional "benefit" is sort of like the difference between wisdom and knowledge-- making bad decisions can ultimately change your heart in good ways as well as changing how you think about things. Hmmm...thanks for pointing that out. :)
this is an interesting conversation to revisit now. i've been thinking some about wisdom and knowledge and what that looks like in my life, and how in some ways i feel a lot less wise than i did several years ago. i wonder why that is. perhaps as knowledge increases it is harder to hold it all in wisdom (not that i have that much knowledge, but experience too). but it's certain that the more knowledge or experience doesn't always make me wiser.
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