Safety net
When two of your friends—from different social circles at that—share the same story to you over social media, you have to wonder to yourself whether it is coincidence or if the universe is conspiring to hammer home something to you.
What was it? It was a fortysomething-year-old man’s lament over his wasted dreams, marriage, family life and expectations in general, as he decided long ago that having a safety net for life’s storms was 10 times better than daring to go out and surfing on the waves that these storms bring.
As he looks back, he then realizes that his window of opportunity, though tinged with the chance of failure (what opportunity isn’t?), has now closed, and all he has to look forward to is “the end” from behind his safety net, which has now netted him in.
We are hardwired to want safety nets. That’s why we plan out what we’re going to eat. That’s why we make five to 10-year plans for our careers. That’s why we take time to save money to buy the different thingamajigs and whatnots instead of splurging it right there and then.
However, when this safety net rules over us, and not vice versa, we become paralyzed—terrified, even— of seizing challenging risk-reward opportunities presented to us.
This kicks me in the butt because I’m a stickler for my plans. Throw one monkey wrench in any of my daily routines and you have the makings of Minions 2 happening in my brain.
What I’ve come to realize, however, is that I’ve got to learn to discern certain moments in life that are important and that are essential.
Important moments are those things that I must do—my job, my supposedly existent social life, and my other rakets outside work—in order to make sure that I don’t end up a hobo subsisting off my parent’s kindness and pity.
The essential things, however, are things that come once in a while, like an opportunity to put up a kid’s museum for local heroes, which may seem ludicrous at best and preposterous at worst.
But really, aren’t the best memories in life made off these essential events—success or failure—because they represent moments where we peeked out from behind our safety nets and dared to sail in the storm?
Try asking Jerrold Tarog whether he had a safety net for Heneral Luna when it was on the chopping block of movie houses everywhere one week into its premiere.
Safety nets are good as long as they don’t cramp our being human. By missing out on trying—and sometimes messing up—to sail in life’s storms, we get to experience the true meaning of being human, that we are meant to move ever forward and not trap ourselves behind nets that we assume are there for our safety.
What safety nets do you need to peek out of?