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risk

You’ll Never Realize Your Dreams Unless You Let Them Go

C2O Editor Conversation Pieces devil's advocate, dreams., faust, love, risk, success 0

It might be something as simple as money. Or it might be something more elusive live love or happiness, even fulfillment. Whatever it is, we all have something inside of us that we want, desire, or need. Each of those is something that we thing will change the tides of our fortune and create a more positive experience of our life. Nothing is free in this world, and just as there are two sides to every coin, there is a sacrifice that must be made for what you want.

Literature and pop culture has referenced the notion of making a deal with the devil so often that it has become familiar to us in the form of Goethe’s Faust or as a more contemporary example, the film Devil’s Advocate (Keanu Reeves, Al Pacino 1997). In each the story goes that a man has made some irrevocable deal with Satan himself to achieve great worldly success but in exchange he must sign his soul over to him. This present a very extreme example of a compromise we are faced with everyday; doing things we don’t want to do, to have something that we want.

A lot of people want to be rich, but a lot of people also do not want to work so hard. Assuming that there was a direct correlation to how hard you worked and your wealth it might be easier to put in the effort, but in the world we live in we have to deal with a risk factor that all our work might not actually pay off. For others the dream is to get married or be in loving relationships, but they often find it hard to stay patient or accepting of the people they are in relationship with. We find that so many of these swords are double edged, it is as if the door way to your dreams is at the end of a hallway of nightmares. So the question becomes how bad do you want it.

For those that are absolutely desperate, ambitious or relentless, making a deal with the devil seems like a great proposition. Their focus is much simpler and their goals are much clearer. Yet this is not how we are all wired. When we are faced with the challenge of seeing through a persons faults to e reminded of why we love them. Sometimes it is not our inability that gets in our way, but our desire. Perhaps we can not see the future value in light of the sacrifice.

There is too much in the way of idealism for us to let it hold us back in the real world. It is one thing to always be pushing against the accepted paradigm, it is another thing to let it paralyze you. There is the artist who will leave a painting incomplete because of the inability to find the perfect shade of blue, but we have to ask ourselves if the compromise is worth it to wait. Share nothing, or share something?

If we are unwilling to take a crumby high paying job to get where we want financially we can’t blame anyone for the lack of funds in our bank account. We have the obligation to live in the here and the now, while balancing our perspective on the future.

The secret to success is realizing that it may not end being as perfect as you dreamt it, but tomorrow is yours to shape and you will never realize your dreams if you don’t take a chance at it. Being too attached to the perfect state in which they exist in your imagination is the perfect way to ensure that your dreams remain figments of it.

Curiosity: Exploration, Novelty, And Risk

C2O Editor Publisher's Note curiosity, edmund burke, psychology of curiosity, risk 0

In a famous quote Edmund Burke states ” The first and simplest emotion which we discover in the mind, is curiosity.” This is profound for a couple reasons; one, it was written in 18th Century Dublin but curiosity is not something we often refer to as an emotion. Secondly it is curious that curiosity would be found so early in the mind but it makes total sense.

If you are a cause and effect type of person you could say that beneath every action is some core, perhaps subconscious, motivating factor. It could be argued that curiosity is an instinct that helps us find food. It is the thing that makes us look under a rock for some worms, or maybe water. We can’t fully describe how it works but we know it is what has kept us moving since the beginning of time.

Curiosity, might have been the thing that helped us find food in the early days or even find water but now it has become something else. It is a source of inspiration and motivation for us to explore our planet, ourselves, and even outer space for seemingly unknown reasons. As a race, we are always looking for answers. Even when we find some answers we go out searching for more.

But some of us have lost our curiosity, we have decided to stop looking for answers, and exploring. What are the things that keep us from being curious? Some claim fear and pain could be reasons for holding us back. If we’ve gone out searching and had a negative experience it can keep us from doing so again. This fear can stifle our curiosity and paralyze us.

On the other side of things we have to ask if the cause and effect relationship, the search for food or other value, what really causes us to be curious. Perhaps it is a part of us that seeks novelty whether or not we deem the experience as potentially positive or not. It could be that what we seek is simply stimulation without claim on whether it is positive or negative. So we traverse our environment moving towards the things we do not understand.

We see this in some people and cultures, a link to bravery and courage, but also recklessness. The climbing of mount Everest is an example of something we’ve done only to see if we could. Through preparation we find that it will not be a pleasant experience, and the risk is our very lives, but there are still individuals that try.

When applied to knowledge and creativity, what influences the student or the artist to continue to explore? Is it the hope of prestige or something more innate.

I would claim that curiosity is the feeling that compels us to seek, with absence of incentive or pressure. This means that it compels us to move before we’ve formed a conscious expectation of what we will find. It is the direction we walk when we’re on afternoon stroll, and the things we ponder in our daydreams.

This force leads us subtly towards what becomes desire, and later personal will. All through August we will combing through the nature of this force and all of the above.

-mP-

Maceo Paisley