This
morning in my usual cafe, a friend and I were discussing his tentative
decision of packing up his home here for the last 18 years and going
back to his original home in England. His partner, also a he, died over a
year ago, and he found life alone here very depressing. It's a risk, he
said, but he must take it, as the alternative of living here with the
partner of the past 25 years gone is too painful. During the
conversation on the subject, the word "risk" popped up many times, which
got me to thinking about it once I got home.
I suppose any important decision, especially the ones that are going to influence or determine your future, and life itself, must carry certain degree of risk, as the outcome is impossible to predetermine, and no definite result could be guaranteed. The decision might lead to positive outcome, and again it might not. Taking a risk also means to commit or implicate oneself to carry out actions that are beyond one's own and exclusive interests, as much an act of risk as compromise.
As an intellectual, he must have turned the idea a hundred times any which way in his mind, as I would have if I were in his situation. In the end, it's just a question of staying put or going back to start afresh. Both carry the same risk of working out well or not at all.
That's the trouble with intellectuals, spending far too much time dwelling on ideas and alternatives which takes weeks, months, or like in my friend's case, almost a year on this one single decision or, rather, indecision. A simpler man, less educated or less of an intellectual, would have done one thing or the other decided in hours or a few days, and the risk he had taken would have been exactly the same as my friend here is facing.
Tags:Intellectual,Risk
I suppose any important decision, especially the ones that are going to influence or determine your future, and life itself, must carry certain degree of risk, as the outcome is impossible to predetermine, and no definite result could be guaranteed. The decision might lead to positive outcome, and again it might not. Taking a risk also means to commit or implicate oneself to carry out actions that are beyond one's own and exclusive interests, as much an act of risk as compromise.
As an intellectual, he must have turned the idea a hundred times any which way in his mind, as I would have if I were in his situation. In the end, it's just a question of staying put or going back to start afresh. Both carry the same risk of working out well or not at all.
That's the trouble with intellectuals, spending far too much time dwelling on ideas and alternatives which takes weeks, months, or like in my friend's case, almost a year on this one single decision or, rather, indecision. A simpler man, less educated or less of an intellectual, would have done one thing or the other decided in hours or a few days, and the risk he had taken would have been exactly the same as my friend here is facing.
Tags:Intellectual,Risk
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