Two weeks ago I talked some pretty big talk about not accepting things as they are and how it’s always better to take steps to change a bad situation, since this is pretty integral to how I live my life. There’s one thing I forgot to mention, though:
Making change happen always comes with risk.
I don’t write about this nearly enough, but Risk is a pretty vital part of the whole Change equation: every time you change something in your life, there’s a Risk that said Change will make things worse or uncomfortable, and that can be a scary thing. (See what I did there with the Capital C and R, btw?)
I’ve been reading William Faulkner’s Light in August this month and was struck by this passage early in the novel (Quick Context: Byron’s a guy who’s been working six-day weeks at a planer mill for a LONG time, while the Hightower character has been something of a shut-in):
“Why do you spend your Saturday afternoons working at the mill while other men are taking pleasure down town?” Hightower asked.
“I don’t know,” Byron said. “I reckon that’s just my life.”
“And I reckon this is just my life too,” the other said. ‘But I know why it is,’ Byron thinks. ‘It is because a man is more afraid of the trouble he might have than he ever is of the trouble he’s already got. He’ll cling to trouble that he’s used to before he’ll risk a change.’
Faulkner, as usual, gets it right: Life is full of awful, terrible, and gut-wrenching experiences, but all that’s a walk in the park compared to the unknown.
Facing the Unknown and Giving Up What You’ve Got Isn’t For Everyone
Usually on this blog I try to inspire people by saying things like Follow your dreams! Make a change! Do that thing you’ve always wanted to do but you’ve been putting off! but today I want to dig a little deeper and ask another question:
Are you the type of person who’s actively interested in taking Risks?
(See what I did there again, instead of talking about Change, which is a positive thing, I asked a question about Risk, which is a negative thing!)
I talk to a lot of people who, for one reason or another, are interested in Stability, another capital-letter word. Stability takes many forms, but here’s a few examples of what it means to people:
- Earning a steady income and making enough money
- Having familiar places to live and work
- Knowing that your current path is building toward some sort of reliable success
- Maintaining stable relationships (romantic or otherwise)
- Having a family
- Being able to enjoy your favorite [insert food/TV show/sport/activity/video game/vacation here] on a regular basis
These are all really important things to a lot of people, and some of them weigh pretty heavily on my mind too. Giving up your Stability, or taking the Risk of giving it up, can be unpleasant and scary, especially if you have to sacrifice any of the things on this list to go after something bigger that might not even work out the way you want it to.
For some of you reading, the things on this list are, quite honestly, the Most Important Things in the World, either because you don’t have any creative work to pursue, or because you view the creative work you do have as more of a hobby or a side pursuit, meaning that the things on the Stability list naturally rank higher on your priorities scale.
Other people, though, face an insane, enigmatic, and all-around panic-attack-inducing choice: Are the Stable Things you want more important than the desire for Big Change, especially when said Change involves pursuing your creative work?
Know Your Priorities, As Well as The Priorities of Those Around You
There’s nothing wrong with being the type of person who prizes the things on the Stability list—actually, those are the people who often strike me as the happiest, the most successful, and the ones I’m jealous of because they get to spend more time on their hobbies than I do.
The most important thing is to know your honest goals and desires so you can structure your life accordingly. If you want to focus on your own personal Stability List, then you should devote your life to enhancing that Stability for you and the people you care about, especially when it comes to building strong relationships, families, and communities.
However, if you’re the type of person who wants to pursue a different kind of life, it’s important to recognize that this path will potentially make certain things on the Stability List difficult or (cue ominous music) impossible.
That can be a bummer until you consider that if you’re dedicated and passionate enough about making that Change, then the very act of following the Change path will be so fulfilling that you won’t miss the things on the Stability list. It’s like ordering dessert at a nice restaurant and you really, REALLY want the chocolate peanut-butter pie so bad that after you order it but before you’ve even bit into it you stop thinking about that delicious-looking key lime pie that you also saw on the menu and really wanted too, but not as badly.
Key lime pie is of course an excellent pie, but if your priorities lie with the chocolate peanut-butter, then you might very well have to give up the key lime—for a while, at least. But the good thing is, you probably won’t miss it.
The same goes for the people around you: everyone has different priorities when it comes to Change vs. Stability, and one person’s path is going to seem ridiculous to someone in the other camp.
No matter which side you’re on, I’m discovering more than ever as I get older that it’s important to respect the choices of the people around you, because if you try to make them take Risks they’re not ready for (or give up on the Change dreams they’re pursuing), then you’re coercing them into living a life they don’t want to live, and that’s not cool.
Final Thoughts
For a long time now I’ve been organizing my life to focus on the writing and other creative work that means a lot to me. As fulfilling and happy as this has made me, the choice to follow this path is made easier by my being a single guy with no kids, no mortgage, no pets, a Day Job I don’t care about, and two parents who are perfectly capable of caring for themselves, leaving me more time, energy, and money to focus on the things that matter to me.
However, if my life looked a little differently, then I might not be able to focus on the things I’m focusing on right now because my energy would be needed elsewhere, potentially in big, big ways.
This brings me to a final, somewhat unsettling conclusion: how much of the desire to live a creative life comes from not having a stable set of connections that bring you fulfillment, thus freeing up your ambitions for something bigger?
And that’s both an amazingly awesome and a pretty sad thing.
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