by Don Hall

Caution is overrated.

It's true that the more times you fling your body at life and get smashed to the ground, broken and damaged in small and larger ways, it gets harder to throw caution aside. One could argue that the kind of people who build homes in Miami fool themselves into thinking that building a home in a location historically known for hurricanes is a reasonable thing to do. To suggest otherwise might be a form of victim blaming and Christ on a Triscuit with a Slice of American Cheese, we mustn’t assign any sort of responsibility for misfortune on the unfortunate. The heresy of bucking the New Conventional Wisdom behind the most intersectional victimized is just another version of tossing your self worth and possibility of future employment into the Cuisinart of society.

One could further argue that, in toes cases and many others, caution is prudent. Hell, it might even be wise.

But we humans aren't generally prudent or wise and when we are, we almost always regret it.

We admire those who go out on a limb and succeed. But we admire those who fail really big, too. As long as the brass ring seems worth the risk. A guy who risks getting hit by multiple cars running across a speeding highway to grab a penny is a dumbass. The same guy leaps in the danger zone to get a one of a kind flower for the woman he loves and we swoon for the gesture. Even if he gets splattered like a June Bug on the face shield of a motorcycle helmet in the process.

While I’ve never found myself in any sort of rapey situation, I’ve had my share of clumsy, “are we really in an alley?” sex. A ton of it unprotected. Likely because somehow, the fear of sex and HIV never quite made the same impact on my dimwitted sense of survival as it did so many others. I look at my contemporaries and their kids and I see two generations taught to be terrified of sex and recreational drugs and, hell, just about everything else.

Cautious people tend to live longer than those who routinely wad up reasonable behavior like a gum wrapper. Cautious people work in cubicles and only for the paycheck. Cautious people never risk offending anyone. Cautious people don't allow for huge emotions - content to only want things within reach. But we don't aspire to be like those cautious people.

What do you want to be when you grow up? The hands raise in unison.

A data processor!
An actuary!
The CFO of a non-profit!

We aspire to be astronauts and poets and trapeze artists and skydivers. We aspire to be amazing. We bought the Kool Aid concoction that says each one of us is fucking butterfly waiting to sprout wings and that hard work is what gets you to the top rungs of the ladder.

No. Success comes from a cocktail of luck, timing, and the willingness to be completely reckless and thoughtless and bold. Say what you want about Donald Trump (and you can't say it. better than Liz Cheney, amiright?) the guy did something no one—NO ONE—could even imagine. He got elected to the presidency by insulting people and stirring up deep-seated racial discord.

Sure, maybe the Russians influenced the dipshits among us (and that includes those of us who took the bait of the bought by rubles Faceborg ads that intentionally inflamed our disdain for one another). Certainly, the Electoral College was the broken mechanism that put him there but I’m still not seeing our most strident Social Justice advocates trying to eliminate that archaic horseshit so how about shut the fuck up until you’re serious about reforming the process, yeah?

As we continue down the Road, we get knocked down. It hurts. Our marriages fail, we get fired from jobs, we lose all of our savings, our house gets leveled by Malevolent and Uncaring Nature. We get sick, our bodies fail us, our hearts lead us in the wrong direction. We invest everything in people we love passionately and then they die. And it gets harder to get back up every single time. If we choose to spawn offspring, we not only have to suffer our own scrapes and breaks but also have to endure those of our helpless children. So we make them wear helmets and use Purell and do everything we can to keep them arrested in a phase of comfort until they become self righteous idiots demanding safe spaces.

Caution is just much, much easier. Love—but only a little. Live—but only in the margins. Swim in the shallow end of the Big Pool and be sure to wear those nose clip things.

You only get one shot at each day. Then it's over. If you wasted it being cautious, you never get it back. You can only look back at your iCal and wonder where it went and why you feel sort of hollow when you look at the number on the screen.

Dream big. Then get out of your rocking chair and go after what you dream at any cost. Before you get too tired or discouraged to get up outta that fucking chair.