What if safety isn't the thing?

I read these words this week in a book by Jen Sincero...

We tiptoe through life hoping to make it safely to death.

It's funny because it is true.  So much of our lives are spent avoiding risk.  And yet in every wonderful moment of life...the scenes we retell...there is that moment where we take the leap of faith.

It isn't that we never fall.  We do. 

There are people who propose who get rejected. 

People who write novels that aren't read by a publisher. 

People who ask for raises who get fired.

People who dance onstage and fall down. 

People who climb mountains who fall down and die. 

And yet. 

Sitting on our couches watching television with our security system turned on doesn't produce a life that people are interested in hearing about.  We don't grow that way.  There is no joy in it. 

We can organize our lives so that no risk is ever required of us. We can "tiptoe safely to death." 

But do we really want to do that? Do we want to get to the end never having lived at all?

My guess is that for each of us reading this we know the thing we are scared of doing. What if we made this the year of "why not"? Why not take the risk and find out if we could make it?  It might produce a more significant life than the one we are living now.