Don’t we remember those times? Stubborn and bull-headed, throwing caution to the winds, allowing the fates to decide what the future would hold for us? Is that a disease of the young, in our view at the time possessing little but insubstantial futures, reckless to a fault? That was a lot to put on a roll of the dice, the whole of our lives before us. But we were confidant we could put all the pieces back together again, come what may. If we survived! Some of the young did not. Particularly if they were in perilous situations, as so many of our young are, fighting our battles for us, or exploring the tenuous ends of new experiences.

Older now, we find caution the better part of valor, of wisdom. We are more likely to settle for keeping what we have, what we have stored away, retaining the small rest of our lives in which we take a little, or a lot, of pleasure.

But it was a heady feeling, standing on what seemed to us the mountaintop of our life experience. How could it get any better? What tales we could have, will have, to tell of our courage, of our acumen, pushing forward courageously into dangerous waters, into our unknown futures. We can dine out for the rest of our lives on the stories of those times that we survived.

The experiences are stored there, way back in our minds, resting for us as an unshakeable core of self-confidence that we have earned for ourselves. We hid the remorse for some of our missteps. If only we had thought a little more about the consequences! At least, that is what we find looking back on those times. We have survived to tell the tale.

Forgotten, maybe, is the fear we felt in the pit of the stomach living through that. Or not. Sometimes we had to grit our teeth to hold on to our nerve, shutting our eyes as we steeled ourselves for the shock of reality that might strike us at any moment. We hoped against hope we would be spared the price of our impetuosities. And sometimes we were not spared. All that we remember now is that we did it. We did it and survived. We did it and earned our own self-respect, even if there turned out to be a price to pay for survival.

Is it just guys who went through all this? We know there is something so macho about this whole notion of risk-taking. But, surely there was some sort of female equivalent. There has to be lots of rebellion against amorphous passivity on the female side as well. Plenty of women take the bit in their teeth and run with their emotions.

I recall how I felt when lightning struck and I was called upon to pay the price for my indiscretions. Why me? The injustice of it all! Of course it was always the essence of poetic justice. Why should one not pay the price for one’s disregard for the most basic discretion? Particularly when others suffer as well. Others often pay a price as well. Then it is a question of honor and integrity. One cannot live with oneself if one does not do the right thing and pay the Piper’s price.

Sometimes the prices we pay haunt us, extracting a cost for the rest of our natural lives. How fortunate many of us were to rise above the penalties we paid that we brought upon ourselves? Even those of our companions who glided through what seemed to us were charmed lives, faced travails we knew nothing about. And didn’t, some of us, at least, enjoy inner tremors of secret satisfaction, all the while we were expressing compassion for our companions’ misfortunes when they finally arose.

Yet those who dare greatly, and carry it off, earn our admiration. We admire and envy them so. We often did not have the intestinal fortitude to take that calculated risk at what seemed to be the right time. Bruised, perhaps, by earlier wounds from our scrimmages with fate, we quailed at the risk. Things are always stacked against us, we said to ourselves. There’s so much we don’t know, we said. Look what happened to Joe when he tried that. What would the wife say if I botch things up again? She made me feel really stupid last time. Better let the opportunity pass. We bite our lips and step back from the precipice. So many regrets get stored up.

So, it’s really six of one and half a dozen of another. We need some measure of risk-taking, if only to keep our self-respect. Is just going into the office pool, or buying a lottery ticket, enough for that? I don’t think so. We need enough confidence in our own judgment to take the risk of going for broke when success will change the nature of our lives, or the lives of our children, in important ways. How to know? You just know, don’t you? Because you remember with acid regret the times you backed off when you should have jumped in with both feet.

For some of us, at our stage in life, this discussion is just a parlor game. Our gambling days are mostly behind us. But we can’t help but remember it all. Every grimy detail!

Have fun, you guys!