When I first heard “If you risk nothing, you gain nothing, you are nothing” I thought it was actually quite true, and it made a lot of sense…but now that I look back onto it I have thought now that differs from what I thought before.
The quote is true to an extent, but life isn’t all about risk. You go to school, go to college, get a degree, and be the occupation you want to be, and surly you are something. You help out, volunteer, work underpaid, and you still gain recognition. No matter what you do, you will gain your 5 minutes of fame, whether it’s with a group, or you individually. Who knows, maybe you’ll get your fame twice, or for the rest of your life. But that doesn’t mean you have to risk anything, and risk can be bad.
I thought about the quote and it occurred to me that perhaps risk isn’t the best thing to do. What is you ran in front of a bullet for a friend*? Why, you gain a title of a great person and a great friend, a hero, but take a look at your situation…you risked your life, you are hanging by a withering thread between life and death. Was that risk worth it? Worth your hard work and dedication to the people around you and yourself?
So I think little risks are fine, it’s the big ones that will get you.
* I wanted to make a footnote of this…act. People everywhere say that they would jump in front of a bullet for a friend, but when that time comes…do you really think they would do it? It’s a hard decision, indeed, but think about it. In all honesty, I wish I would have the guts to say that I would do it, but I don’t…and I know I wouldn’t. But so many things revolve around it, ‘How good is this friend?’, ‘How is my life?’, ‘Do I want to throw my succession all away?’, ‘What did my friend do to deserve this?’, ‘Do I deserve this?’. It’s a hard decision, and actually, I’d like to quote a person who is very close to me, it’s along the lines of :
“It’s easy to say you’ll take a bullet for a friend, but the hard part is finding a friend worth doing it for.”
