Risks & Lemonade

Guys,

 it's time to be real.

 I think it's imperative to take risks in life, see below. 

I'm also terrified of heights. No, really. I'm terrified. This photo proves nothing but insanity. 

I'm preparing to get all philosophical today due in large part to the fact that I had a great hands on object lesson this weekend. Some background... my husband isn't afraid of much, as in...I routinely grill him with questions like "Would you be afraid if you were blind, and someone put you in a room full of silent creeping spiders that could kill you...cause Brad, you can't see them coming....scary, right?" or "Brad...would you be scared of going through an obstacle course where they beat you with bee stingers if you didn't run fast enough?"  Apparently not. Obviously, Brad has a plethora of things he would prefer to avoid, but he's not characterized as being fearful. This is still totally foreign to me, after knowing him since I was 9. It continues to take a bit of mind bending for me to comprehend the idea of not being fearful.  

I'm scared of more things than I can count. To keep it concise, I'll just stick with risks. I'm afraid of risks. Jumping out of a plane at 14,000 is a little different than discussing the hypothetical risks involved in blind spider dodging but a risk is a risk, and I'm scared of all of them.

Story time: Sunday afternoon, Brad and I went kayaking... it had been a while and we couldn't wait to get back in the water. So, in we went - helmets, paddles, and life jackets (mine was too big so I felt a lot like Randy from A Christmas Story floating down the river). The first few rapids were great, in fact the whole river was great up until the very end. Right before the take out we went over the biggest rapid and then decided to play there a bit longer, taking the kayaks back through and repeating the falls a few times. The third or fourth time down, wait for it.... my kayak flipped (huge surprise, y'know since I was only going over rapids in a river, right). I'd love to tell you that I was super cool about it and just flipped that sucker back over, but, no. I freaked. I threw my paddle, I gulped water, I watched rocks and creepy fish swirl by my head and freaked a little more...(Note: not having a paddle makes flipping upright a bit harder... so as tempting as it might be, don't throw it like a javelin in a panic when you start to go over like I did. You're welcome, this moment brought to you by Kayaking Ineptitude Anonymous) Eventually my kayak skirt pulled of and I bobbed to the top, thanks to my Randy attire. I took deep breaths and pulled my flooded kayak off to the side of the river where I sat and tried to calm down. There's a point to this besides me being traumatized, promise. 

     It made me think about risks, I  mean real risks. Not hypothetical silly ones, or even risks involving a kayak accident...I mean taking chances on things and then being willing to learn from the results instead of reacting out of fear and refusing to try again, refusing to stretch yourself more. Oftentimes, taking a chance on something doesn't work out exactly how I imaged it. It doesn't turn out exactly how I wanted it to more often than not, but every single time - I have the opportunity to learn a lesson, and that's life. It's a lemons vs. lemonade situation, you either take the results of a few risks and choose to limit yourself and reduce your own potential by being afraid, or you make some kick-butt lemonade and take away a good lesson. The point here isn't to kayak a class 5 rapid 10 times and drown yourself for good measure. Just be open to trying something new and if it doesn't go as planned, learn from it. It'll be fun. :) 

On a less personal note, arm chair tutorial coming up later this week! 

 - Rae