It's a wide wide world

The thing about grad school is, you're expected to care a lot about a very narrow aspect of the human experience. And if you're not careful you can miss out on a lot of other things. I went to NY this weekend and visited an old friend. It was good for the soul. I was inspired by his courage to risk and dare. It makes me wonder if my own carefully constructed cosmos is too dependent on eliminating the possibility of risk and failure. My new motto is "noli esse timidus". Though Latin can be elitist, it is a well known fact that all mottoes sound better in Latin, so there it is. It means "Don't be timid". It means don't hold back when you need to speak or do. It means don't limit yourself by your own narrowly constricted rules and ways of thinking and being in the world. It means to dare to risk failure. Though an optimist by nature, and also a Calvinist pessimist by nature, I can only hope to fully live into myself and my motto through a sheer recasting of the self and the possibilities I allow myself. The only people who can't risk are the dead. Life is risk. In fact right now I'm risking sounding cheesy. I probably do sound cheesy. But since when did being real become trite? There's a lot of living to do folks! Let's get down and get to it.