Go Out on a Limb

Birches Along the Way
Haines Falls, NY

"Don't be afraid to go out on a limb.

 That's where the fruit is." ---H. Jackson Browne

In graduate business school, we were taught about mitigating risks. In fact we learned to try to avoid risks by all kinds of methods and schemes to insure the safe for safe returns of our benefactors, the stockholders. In life, that same practice, leads to under achievement, anxiety, and boredom. We experience the uneasiness associated with the lack of purpose. We miss out on living and joy.


Robert Frost alludes to "the road not taken". What could be worse in life than the constant nagging and revisiting of choices and opportunities foregone? The fact is that we had no choice in being brought into this world and we will not have a choice as to when will die. We do have a choice about everything in life between those to benchmarks. Our job is to fill everything in between those milestones: birth and death. The choices we make in the space between is the key to our our happiness.