Daring to take risks

Daring to take risks

Once upon a time there was a conference of disabled persons.

Every year they met to nominate the Handicapped Person of the Year. Physical condition didn’t matter. They were looking for an appealing and well adjusted individual who did something meaningful.


“It should be someone blind,” said a blind man.

“Why?” demanded someone else.

“Because I am blind and I am the happiest and cleverest person here.”

“No, no, no,” said everyone almost at once. “You’re too proud.”

“Then how about me?” said a deaf man manually while an interpreter translated what he signed with his hands.

“I’m not proud. Neither am I envious nor angry nor lustful nor greedy. In my humble way I am as good as the blind man was...

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Daring to take risks

Life is sometimes depicted as a road, which implies that we are all travelers. If it is a real road then it should have a direction and if we are really travelers then we should all have destinations.

The truth is, however, that many people don’t really know where they want to go and/or have no idea where the road they are now on is actually heading. Some, on the other hand, know where they should be going, but put off going that way or they are distracted by the attractions of side trips that lead them astray. Then there are those who seem to change direction every time something new appeals to them.

If contentment with one’s life depends upon the knowledge that one’s life has a valued purpose and that in one way or another one...

Read more: The twisting and not so narrow road

Daring to take risks

“Spiritual empowerment” might sound like a catchy, fashionable expression. If you look up the Web, you’ll find an array of techniques and topics under the term. Spiritual empowerment seemingly covers conversing with angels, excelling at yoga or taijiquan, taking hot baths, managing anger feelings, finding out the inner child within you, and much, much more… Furthermore, there is something tricky in associating” spiritual” with “empowerment’; is not real spirituality about making oneself vulnerable, open, weak among the weakest - and is not any talk of “Power” indicative of a misguided perception of what spiritual life is about?

Yet, I like to speak about “spiritual empowerment”, and I’d like to explain why.
First...

Read more: What is “spiritual empowerment”?

Daring to take risks

There are situations in life where we have to go beyond our limits. It might go with extreme suffering, hardships or challenges. We might get from it a feeling both of acute pain and exhilaration. The ones who are able to go through it often say that the experience has made them perceive in a new light the basic facts of death and life, and has helped them to better understand themselves and the meaning of their existence.
Many of us are attracted by extremes, and try to recreate something of the experience of the Extreme, even if it is on a small scale. It can go through mountain climbing or another sport, it can mean challenging oneself with further study, it can be traveling to regions that attract us and frighten us at the same...

Read more: Experimenting with the Extreme

Daring to take risks

Many people who were in the Fisherman’s Wharf in Tamshui near Taipei on July 29th will recognize the word meaning “hello” in the dialect spoken in Orchid Island. Aborigines on the shore were proclaiming the approach of the Orchid Island rowers in their last leg of their ascent up the North coast of Taiwan, reaching for their final destination after one month of sailing.

At one o’clock in the afternoon, many Taiwanese out for a Sunday walk at the harbour saw a small wooden boat with a distinctive shape on the horizon. With a closer look, they could distinguish 13 rowers in armors, wearing wooden hats. The red, white and black patterns painted on the boat clearly identified the aborigines of Orchid Island, a minority tribe living...

Read more: "Agugai"!

Daring to take risks

At precisely 6:05 PM on August 1, 2007 in Minneapolis, Minnesota a bridge on Interstate Highway 35 crowded with rush hour traffic suddenly broke apart and plunged into the Mississippi River sending cars tumbling into the water and killing passengers unable to escape. At least eight innocent persons had the unexpected misfortune of being in the wrong place at the wrong time in spite of the fact that they were doing what was very proper and right, minding their own business, obeying all the traffic regulations and carefully avoiding anything that might endanger others.
Things like this happen all the time. No one has any absolute guarantee when leaving home in the morning that he or she will return in the evening. What are the odds that such...

Read more: Taking the Chance Out of Chance