TAKING RISK or JUST BRAVADO?

Sep 10, 2022

How often have you heard the warning “Do not take risks?“

When the conversation turns to sport (i.e. motorcycling, horse riding, cycling) or physical activities (i.e. sailing, mountaineering, diving), the banal (common) comment is, “You take too many risks, it is too dangerous”.

The expression “taking risk” opens a direct question: “Do I take risks? Am I so unconscious or so adrenalin freak to take risks?”

RISK: to expose someone or something valued to danger, harm, or loss.

Time to start to evaluate myself and consider my thinking and attitude. Search, meditate and question.

From an article on the Internet (edited for brevity): “ Some authors have identified the perception of benefits … how much risk they [the subjects] are willing to accept in exchange for a specific return as the individual factors that may drive risk-taking. Within this framework, the influence of the cognitive and emotional processes in decision-making may affect the way in which a risky situation is perceived.

“Taking a risk” is, in my opinion, an ambiguous expression probably only valid when used by a spectator not familiar with the act he is considering or watching.

No person, intellectually and mentally compos sui, is taking a risk. Nobody with a correct level of awareness wants to expose the self or someone else to danger, harm, or loss. No one of my friends or the persons I ride with or trek with takes the chance of failure or harm.

Knowledge and experience, situation awareness, identification of the hazards, planning with space and time to modify the plan, and competent execution are the negation of risk-taking.

Can all these operational virtues eliminate failure and guarantee a positive outcome? Obviously not:

Knowledge, experience, and competence have limits even among most professionals.

Mistakes are made, poor planning occurs, and the area of unforeseeable can be reduced but is still open ahead: lightning can strike at any moment. Being vulnerable to external forces is not a human dimension reserved for sport or physical activities, is not for the ones “who take risks” but it is the human status of our temporary existence: sitting at home is not a defence.

If we want to be part of the glorious bunch of risk-takers, the ones always blustering improbable performances, we must, at least, warn the audience that we are operating in fiction mode.

I submit that “taking a risk” should be eliminated from our way of talking but mostly from our way of thinking: it will take out the bravado (a pretence of bravery) from our stories and oblige us to take response-ability for any act, without excuses or third-party accusation.