Risk

About a year and a half ago, I posted a 'crowd-sourcing' question on Facebook. Something to the effect of "wisdom on risk taking - go." I remember it clearly and some of the answers that came, and not because I tend to remember everything I post. I remember it because I was in the process of taking a real risk. One that was emotional, exciting and scary. And although the initial result of that risk was hands down balls out positive, the ramifications of what ensued have embroiled me in a yearlong process of loss, ambiguity and disappointment. And have caused other people pain and strife, I have no doubt.

Now I return to this idea of risk. I have shied away from it a lot this past year, but at times I have expressed my truth, been more brave than at any other time in my life. I have risked seeming like a fool, and in retrospect perhaps that has been the result from a certain perspective.

I am an innately cheeky and sometimes irreverent person. I enjoy whimsical banter, but I am also serious and tend towards deep thinking and profound idealism. And I have spent a lifetime feeling that some of the aspects who I am are, well...'a bit much',  in addition to a fairly healthy dose of 'not enough'. As a result I moderate myself, from being too silly, or too serious and quiet, too sad or too brazenly gleeful, especially in the company of strangers. For the most part, it's the impish part of me that hides away - most often with people I know less well, and more so when there is something at stake - something of the ego to be lost or cracked into. I unfold slowly, though in some cases I transcend that tendency.

I work with people for a living, and while I feel one of my gifts is authenticity, I also know there is a part of me that needs to chink the mortar and limit the doorways people have to who I am. I need to stand up in the watchtower and see who's coming, so I can decide whether or not to let you in. If I find myself being too funny, or too serious - a bit much - I might withdraw. If I inadvertently drew you in too quickly then thought better of it this withdrawal is a way that I avoid a painful conversation later. It gives me some time to regroup and reassess, but it is also a form of pre-emptive cowardice. I am as afraid of disappointing as I am of being disappointed.

So what if I was just myself, whatever that means at any given moment? Would the right people just show up and the wrong ones steer clear? And what about that...I expend energy tamping down the fire of who I am, assuming that I am right about who is 'right' and who is 'wrong'. Perhaps my impressions are incorrect.

What if the real risk is the one that I have been so energetically engaged in? I have risked being a smaller version of who I am in order to exert some imagined control over the outcome of my relationships. Perhaps the real measure of who is right and wrong flows organically from all of us simply being ourselves, moved towards or away from each other by the grace of authenticity.