Perhaps two sides of the same coin. For one to know stability they must also know risk, yet, does each pose potential danger should we settle for one or the other?

If you think risks are something grand like quitting your job to start a dream project, jumping out of a plane, betting your life savings at a casino or stock market, whether you should travel during a pandemic, you’re very likely missing the obvious risks and challenges you face every single day. You see, the problem is how humans’ minds work. We’re shortsighted, and limit our thinking to recent events, especially those which are glorified in the media. The virus, terrorism, politics, pressing threats to our safety all around, and frankly is nothing new with being a human. There has never not been, nor will be, a time where humans are not living in a state that risks their livelihood or survival, as it’s an essential element to being alive.

Do you realize that choosing to brush your teeth or not is a risk to your life? What type or quality of foods you eat and where then come from is of gravest risk to your daily and long-term health. How about whether you remembered to wash your hands often enough pre-pandemic, or to stop and take a breath and regain control over your stress level? Because these risks are considered so small, our brains are experts at downplaying them, focusing instead on the pink elephant fears delivered to use through every device near at hand continuously. Risk is in a way linked to fears, for when we fear something yet seemingly must consider doing it, we stop and try to weigh what risks that something may produce. Yet why do we so easily dismiss the minor risks every day? Why can’t we contextualize the genuine dangers from small repeated actions over a lifetime as the actual risks we must address and have the forethought to overcome?

This is where the idea of stability comes into play for us. Our brains thrive on homeostasis, the state in which we perceive, whether or not true, that everything is in a well enough balance that we’re ok not rocking the boat and making changes, even the smallest of one. We believe if things “aren’t too bad” that however poor the current conditions of our daily life are, they are bearable, within a range of problems/stress/risks that seem manageable and thus we are ‘stable’. That isn’t to say there isn’t some validity in that one’s life might not have stable elements. From Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, with Physiological at the lowest level, one is arguably on a stable footing already if they have access to shelter, food, and water. From this vantage point, up the pyramid one could view the higher levels as risks already, and be content to stay fixed in their stability.

Thus, seeking only stability in life is meek an outcome as wantoningly disregarding the small daily risks, both ultimately leading to an unfulfilled end. Surely not wanting to reach higher feels quite comfortable and likewise ignoring the minor risks now seems like nothing to worry about. Neither of which will serve you well in later years.

We need to both be comfortable in being uncomfortable, pushing at our edges and striving to do better, while avoiding caring about the preceded colossal risks and addressing the very real near ones we can actually control every day. Reaching higher on Maslow’s hierarchy will force you to always have the underlying stability, as it is required in order to reach and risk for a greater state of life. Even if you were to achieve the highest level, the journey never stops or ends and the risks too never cease to exist.

To put this into context for the future you, some sage advice from my eighty-eight-year-old grandfather, “If I had known I’d lived this long, I would have taken better care of myself”. It’s safer to bet you’ll live much longer than you are predicting, and that the state or quality of your later years is determined but how you choose to live your life, right here, today.