How Much Risk Am I Worth?

Fear always presents an opportunity for personal magnificence!  ....Bob Trask

From chapter one of Romancing The Soul, Your Personal Guide to Living Free....

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A life well-lived is a life filled with failure. But failure is not fatal, it is a blessing. The more precious our goal, the more failures and self-expansions we must undergo to attain it. We are on divine missions, each of us, without blueprints to follow; we are pioneers, designing our path as we go, reaching into the darkness of the unknown to accomplish what our souls call us to do. If, in the process, we compare the number of our failures to the number of our wins, our self-confidence might crumble, because we will fail far more often than we will succeed. But if we see each failure as an important part of success, a necessary step to winning, we will not let failure define us. Then our fear of failure cannot keep us from taking the risks we must take in order to win.

Leon’s Story
Moments before he died, Leon Ames, staring at the ceiling of my ambulance, answered my question. “Yeah, my boat! If I hadn’t been so damn scared of what someone might say, I’d have built my boat.” He turned to me, his face working, his voice tight, “God, how I wish I’d just gone ahead and built that boat.”

For several months before this, I’d been asking people who were fully aware that they were dying and who had surrendered to their deaths, the same question; “When you look back now, do you have any regrets?” I wanted to know because I wondered if there might be something to be learned by those of us who still had time to take a different path.

I had heard a few others say basically the same thing, but it was Leon’s reply that really got my attention; he was the third person in a space of two weeks who basically told me, “If I could do my life over, I would do what I wanted instead of listening to my fear.” After Leon was dead, I sat alone in the dark ambulance watching rain, like tears, crawling down the windshield.

I knew Leon. Six months earlier, I had gone to his home to take his wife to the hospital. She died within days and, with her death, Leon's reason for living. When his sudden heart attack came I went to his home and found him strangely calm but deeply sad. Leon did not fear death, but its nearness opened an old wound he had kept hidden from himself for years. The agony he suffered for his loss, the realization that he had come into this life with something important to do which now he would never accomplish. It was too late. Leon Ames understood finally that he had not accomplished his life’s mission.

Was it just a boat? Was all his sorrow over having not built a boat? I wondered how a boat could be so important. So, he described it to me; and, it was then that I realized he had envisioned a genius hull design that perhaps no one had ever seen before. It was a hull that would move through the water as water itself, partnering with water instead of fighting it. Leon had a mind full of ideas and even as he lay dying, a light came into his eyes. His boat would move through the water with a grace and ease that would cause boat builders to transform their ideas of hulls and sails. The design came only through Leon’s soul. As we are each unique, so are our creations! Leon’s design could never be replicated by anyone else. Because of his fears, he had deprived us of ever having that design in our world; and he now knew it.

As I sat in the ambulance waiting for my partner to finish his paper work, questions crowded into my mind. Why do so many of us come to the end of our lives not knowing how to live; not even remembering our missions or what made us unique in the world? Is it because we feel obligated and are in resistance to the pressures of obligation? Is it because we really don’t understand? Leon would insist now that our motivation should not be an obligation but an opportunity. He learned too late that he was given a gift that he never unwrapped. His life’s mission, his passion, would have been to design and build his boat; there is nothing he would rather have been doing. Leon turned away from his mission because he believed he should be doing something else.

But can our life’s mission be as easy as that? Should we go about the world just doing what we want to do, what we are passionate about, and dismissing our obligations? I could not help looking at my own life that afternoon; I felt myself drowning in a life I didn’t want to lead; avoiding doing what I really wanted, because I was afraid of failing my obligations to others. I wondered - would my last moments be like those of Leon and other dying people I had talked to? Would I be devastated to find that the fair had left town, while I still had unused ride tickets in my pocket? But, what do I do with my old ideas? What about the concrete beliefs I grew up with, the ones that had come to define me as a person?

I realized that afternoon that I was stuck. I didn’t want to be stuck; I wanted to grow. To do that, I would have to change not what I thought about things, but how I thought about things. I had to discover valid, new paradigms that would allow me to see truth not from just one viewpoint, but from as many viewpoints as possible. I remember another afternoon, years later, again in San Francisco when I, as a sea captain, came ashore to have lunch with an attorney friend. He invited his accountant, a pleasant man I had met before, to come along. During lunch the accountant plied me with questions, “Have you ever seen a whale jump? Did you ever swim with a shark? What is a wild sea like at night?” He couldn’t get enough of my stories. I walked them back to their office and said good-bye. But as I was leaving the office, this curious man called out to me; “Say, Bob, do me a favor will you? When you’re out on that sea, surrounded by dolphins and sunsets, think of this sailor, locked in the body of an accountant.” The people around us laughed, but I did not laugh and neither did he. He meant it.

I, too, had been locked in my identity before the day Leon died. But, on that day I set myself free. That accountant’s story has stayed with me for years and I wonder if he ever broke free. Or had his life, like a leaky faucet, continued trickling out his passion and purpose for living until at the end, he would look back and realize he had made a mistake.

When I was a boy, we were quite poor. Yet, in nearly every housing project that we lived, there was a library where I could get books that let me escape to other times and places. As I read of the adventurers in those books, I made a list of what I would do when I grew up; sea captain, wilderness guide, scuba-diving instructor, commercial fisherman, forester, firefighter, ambulance attendant, explorer, singer, comedian, actor, realtor and writer. My mom said I could never do them all, that I had to settle down and focus on one thing. My grandmother accused me of being arrogant and dishonest for wanting such glory for myself. As my list grew and adults told me my dreams were foolish, I became more and more despondent. Life didn’t seem worth living if I had to live it in that box. I was a kid from a housing project, with no father and with brothers and sisters to support. I felt like I was in a cage looking out at all those who were free. When I thought of how impossible my dreams were, I felt myself dying inside. It wasn’t until I was about twenty that I realized I had already experienced several of my dreams. I had been a firefighter, forester, commercial fisherman and truck driver. Slowly, my goals were being accomplished. I have read of others who made similar lists and were also amazed to find they were accomplishing their dreams.

By the time I met Leon, I had been bogged down with obligations for quite awhile. I wanted to quit then and go follow my dreams, but I could hear my grandma’s voice telling me; “See there, you just cannot keep a job, can you? You start getting ahead and then you quit and go start over somewhere else. You’ll never amount to anything!” Every time I wanted to go off to another adventure, I felt the shame of disappointing my grandma. But I went anyway, the calling was just too strong to ignore. (end of passage)

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I’m not suggesting that we run away with the circus this year or go seeking buried treasure in the South Seas. I’m recommending we simply listen to the songs of our souls and then follow them. Like all living members of this Universe, to stay healthy we must be in process. As rivers of light, let us have the courage to flow where we are called. We need only take that first step, which is to visualize and accept our fondest dreams then take a little risk and declare our intention. Our friend Leon would ask us not to wait. He would say to do it now, for we are definitely worth the risk!

There are so many more good stories in this book! Check it out at:
http://www.amazon.com/Romancing-Personal-Guide-Living-ardcover/dp/0961216441/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1261092419&sr=1-2
(If you’d like your copy personally autographed, let me know.)

For Personal Coaching call 425-577-0556 or email bob@arasfoundation.org

A Bit of Humor For You:
A traffic cop spots a woman driving and knitting at the same time.
He says, "Pull over!" "No," she shouts back, "a pair of socks!"

Our Heroine of The Week:
Eleanor Clift is a Newsweek journalist, a member of the McLaughlin Hour and a constant inspiration to Americans everywhere who take their facts from neither the left nor the right but rather seek a commonsense understanding that includes all truths. As one of Washington’s most informed reporters Eleanor has, throughout her career, been steadfast in reporting only what she sees as truth while not allowing herself to be swayed by political pressures from either side. Eleanor recently lost her husband, Tom Brazaitis who was her closest friend and companion. Yet despite her loss and the constant pressures of her career, Eleanor Clift holds fast to the keen professionalism of her life’s work; which keeps her strong, millions accurately informed and makes her our heroine this week.