Risky Business

First it was eggs. Too high in cholesterol we were told. Then butter. Red meats were a no-no for sure, the first step along the purer pathway that vegetarians and vegans prefer. And sugar—the bane of our modern existence, should be greatly reduced or avoided altogether, much to the chagrin of those, like me, who have never met a candy, cake or pie they didn’t like.   Were it not for  semisweet chocolate and its antioxidant chemistry, we might be left with the most bland and spartan of gastronomical choices.  This was sarcastically brought home to me several years ago by an Amarillo cardiologist who informed our Rotary Club that, “if it tastes good, don’t eat it!”  The irony wasn’t lost on me or my Rotarian compatriots who had just devoured a sumptuous buffet that, owing to its delicious taste, should have been taboo.  What pleases the mind and our dietary yearnings might not always be good for the bodies we find ourselves inhabiting.  Surely this is one of the great dilemmas we humans must grapple with each day of our lives. 

It was therefore with some degree of skepticism and grief that I learned of the latest governmental warning about foods we should limit or eliminate entirely from our diets.  Red wine?  They must be kidding!  Wasn’t it just a few years back that, within the larger realm of alcoholic beverages, those bearing the labels Merlot, Shiraz and Pinot Noir were actually promoted as being good for us, indeed, life extenders.  And wasn’t it the apostle Paul who, two millennia ago, counseled Timothy, his brother in evangelism, to include wine in his diet to help his stomach and relieve his other ailments?   What then should we make of the most recent cautionary pronouncement that even one glass of this fruit of the vine will likely shorten our longevity by a few hours?  

Now I must confess a certain bias in addressing this latest warning from the Surgeon General. Few pleasures offer me such relaxed comfort or ease my stresses more than a glass of wine—Chardonnay if possible—even though the sugar content of whites, I’m told, is less helpful to my overall health. But whether your palate  runs to a good Cabernet or Pinot Grigio, the news this week is equally upsetting. Will this prove to be the latest government intrusion into regulating our lives and depriving us of another of those freedoms we once enjoyed? Graybeards like me remember blissful years riding bikes without helmets and driving cars without the encumbrances of those restricting belts which turned bench seats into buckets, putting a serious damper on drive-in movie cuddling.  Before we start looking with horror at our parents for being naïve or just plain careless, we must recall that  they grew up at a time—and we once we lived in an age— with few of the protective bubbles and confinements that now script so much of our lives.  Ours was a childhood in which the old saw, “what you don’t know can’t hurt you,”  was an article of faith that even our parents accepted with few questions or protests.

I know this to have once been true from my first-hand experience growing up in the 1950s.  My own dear mother was a nervous Nelly when it came to the safety of her children.  Yet she had no qualms about my walking the three blocks to and from school along a busy street, making that journey four times a day (since we came home for lunch).  And her worries never kept me from exploring the neighborhood with my boyhood chums, playing games that took us into vacant woodlots or tramping through the slog of our local swamp.   I can only imagine what she would be like as a parent today.  Would she find herself questioned by the police for her neglect in allowing her unaccompanied child to traverse the neighborhood each day  without an adult in tow !   I suspect I would be kept under close supervision at home with few opportunities to ever be put in harm’s way.  How times have changed, and how our attitudes—or should I say insecurities—have multiplied.

So what should I make of the revelation that my life is now threatened each time I sip a glass of wine?  Will the promised warning labels on the bottle deter me from continuing to endulge one of my favorite pastimes?  The prospect of what lies next has led me to entertain what many reasonable Americans find themselves considering when given such foreboding news:  a risk assessment.  

Without pooh-poohing the Surgeon General’s findings, I am inclined to ask how the inherent danger of a glass of wine compares to other risks I normally take without too much hesitation. Almost daily I choose to take a bath or shower.  I regularly drive a car.  Several times a year I travel on commercial airplanes.  And who can count the number of times I overeat, swim in private pools without a lifeguard, burn candles in the house, or climb footstools or ladders to fix things I can’t otherwise reach. All of these activities entail a certain amount of danger and potential for harm, as this statistical chart of what can kill us makes very clear.

The last item on this list makes this week’s tragedy in the skies over the Potomac river in Washington all the more shocking to us.   The trust we now place in traveling by plane has become so second-nature to us that most of us buy our tickets and make our reservations with little or no thought of the risk we might be taking.  Orville and Wilbur would be quite proud of how their makeshift invention so revolutionized the way we move about this planet that, thanks to them, has become so much smaller than it once was. 

Returning to the list above, and scanning what is likely to shorten my life from this roster of threats, I can surmise that my odds of survival under normal circumstances appear rather good. In fact they are far better than my ever winning the lottery or striking it rich at a casino.  I can say this because I’ve lived a rather sedate life when once you catalogue all I haven’t done or regularly do. In assessing the risks that are part of my normal set of activities, it is clear to me that I have always leaned most heavily into lower, less threatening risks than some people find exhilarating and life enhancing. Apparently what hasn’t yet killed me has made me a bit stronger, and that includes the glass or two of wine I might enjoy a few nights a week.

When it comes to risks and risk-taking, I believe there is much wisdom in looking at our lives through a bigger-picture lens that includes the many factors that contribute to our enjoying good health or suffering some illness or medical catastrophe. Among these genetics certainly plays a major role, along with our lifestyle choices and behaviors. Worry, stress, relational contentment or disaffection, vocational satisfaction or frustration must also be considered in assessing what constitutes a threat to our life and continued longevity.  So does the company we keep.  Those of us who like to run with daredevils or burn the candle of life-threatening thrills increase our odds of a premature or unexpected accident, perhaps even a fatal one.  Those of us  who spend our days with folks who avoid death-defying pursuits and strive for a more careful and pedestrian existence will likely find those odds diminished.

In other words, assessing the risks we take—and must take if we are to live any kind of meaningful life—is never a matter of one or two behaviors or dietary choices to be weighed in isolation from all the other components of our life.  For while we may be beautifully and wonderfully made as the spiritual song likes to remind us, we are also rather complicated, conflicted, changeable and vulnerable creatures. On top of that, and perhaps most importantly, we are thinking beings who, even in the worst of circumstances, have the capacity to exert our will in making choices about what we will do or not do, whom we will emulate or decry, and how we will use our time, be it wisely and productively or foolishly and carelessly.

So far what I’ve been describing could be categorized as behavioral risks, and each, as the statisticians tell us, bring with them the possibility  that we might succumb to an accident or injury, or suffer an illness, that could lead to our death. Although I’ve been rather successful in avoiding many of those listed above, I wouldn’t call myself a person who is afraid or reluctant to ever take a risk. In fact, when it comes to speaking my mind, or stepping into the fray of an argument or a politically sensitive issue at home, work or church, I have been known to take some risks which proved unwise to both my relationships and my careers. I guess it couldn’t have been any other way given my personality and competitive nature.   Apparently a proverb I memorized in high school French class may describe me better than I’d generally admit:  

“Nothing ventured, nothing gained” is how we commonly put it in English, although the literal French may be truer to the sentiment I wish to convey. “Who risks nothing, gains nothing!”  I think, in translation,  I prefer the verb, venture, as it holds a more measured and noble sentiment for me than does risking, which conveys something impromptu and foolhardy.  Yet  the sentiment rings true for both terms.  Athletes know this better than most.  They quickly learn that you can’t miss any shots you don’t take. Likewise teenagers struggling with insecurities at every turn know full well that they’re not likely to be embarrassed at events they don’t attend, or get a failing grade for assignments they never finish, or lose at sports for which they never try out, or get passed over for parts in plays for which they refuse to audition.  Qui ne risque rien, n’a rien.*  

Nowhere does this maxim ring truer to me than in observing America’s current social and political melodrama where so many of us seem risk averse. The widespread polarization so visible and audible within our national and state governments, where adversarial interest groups drive and shape cultural viewpoints on so many issues about which there once appeared to be consensus, might make you think otherwise.  Isn’t everybody taking the risk of advancing their opinions and championing their causes?  So it would seem.  Yet is there greater risk in standing out, capturing the attention  of those who know how to capitalize on whatever is trendy and, in the process, inspiring  a parade of cultural lemmings  eager to belong to something?  Or does the more substantial risk come whenever we are willing to find common ground  among adversaries, where we must risk slugging it out around negotiation tables where compromise, and not victory, is the agenda?  Is it more risky to trumpet one’s  dogmatic convictions in dominating our opponents or to enter into dialogue with them, where  giving and taking hold higher priority than winning or losing? What risk is there in locking arms with those whose values mimic our own at a rally, or jumping onto tribal bandwagons where we take comfort in belonging among the true believers?  Not much, in my judgment.

But to voice a contrary opinion, to take a stand for a conviction that deviates from the  norm, to say “no” within the din of an earsplitting chorus of “YES”, or “yes” when “NO” resonates from every corner of the room—now that is risky business.  Qui ne risque rien, n’a rien.  I say this not only as a matter of fact.  For me it is a confession.  I’ve taken more than a few risks in my life, some from which I may have gained a measure of success or respect, and others that proved to be ill-conceived or regrettable.  Yet only in taking a risk did I come close to discovering what it means to aspire, to care, to commit, and to fully live.  I’d be surprised if this wasn’t true for you as well.

In coming to this conclusion I have found solace in the quote I recently stumbled upon from the late Norman Vincent Peale (author of the best-seller of a bygone era, The Power of Positive Thinking) that concludes this essay. If life, every life, contains an element of risk, then it follows that living well is not a matter of how well we shield and inoculate ourselves from all the dangers and challenges that we may possibly face in any one day. Life’s meaning will be found in weighing, or assessing, if and how the risks we are called to take actually align with our interests, our values and our commitments.  If, in that reckoning, we choose to risk ourselves in the pursuit of something greater than ourselves, then the risk is not only well taken—it is necessary.  And that, I believe, is especially true when the risk we take involves standing up for what we believe in, no matter how intimidating the host of adversaries confronting us, or how overwhelming the weight of popular opinion pressuring us.  

*If you picked up on the discrepancy between the proverb as depicted on the stock image and the version I’ve written it in the text, it is because I’m following the more abbreviated form I learned from my excellent high school French teacher, Madame Marks: Qui ne risque rien, n’a rien.  It is firmly etched in my mind, 56 years after I first learned it.  Merci beaucoup chere professeure.