15 Things: I Like Risk

So I've learned in the last 18 months that I like risk.  If you took a time machine back 18 months, grabbed me then, and brought me back to the now, the younger me would look at this blog post and say, "That's crap.  I already like risk.  I already know that.  You haven't learned that in the past 18 months, because I already know it to be true." 

I would look at her pityingly.  "Not so fast, my young friend.  I know you THINK you like risk, but you're not really taking big risks yet.  You like risk-takers, and you like the rush of being around risk takers.  You've realized that part.  But you haven't yet become one.  You still play things safe.  You're still waiting to be patted on the head or invited to a path that already exists.  You still want to be told what to do and then rewarded for jumping through the hoop really well.  You like being around people who blaze their own trail but you are basking in their shadow."  She might shrug and agree with me.  After all, she's pretty self aware. 

Or she might argue  semantics with me.  It all depends on your idea of risk.  I've taken plenty of risks already, she might say.  It was risky to go off and live in the woods with a schooner captain I'd just fallen in love with right out of college.  It was risky to start a nonprofit.  It was risky to speak up at the first Pop!Tech and challenge Esther Dyson and George Gilder in front of an auditorium full of people.  It was risky to go to a law school that wouldn't give me a fancy pedigree.  It was risky to turn down law review and instead spend my time working at a venture capital firm, studying people who REALLY take risks.  It was risky to base my decision about where I'd spend my 2L summer not on the name or prestige of the BIGLAW firm, but on my gut feeling about the renegade new partner building a new practice group who I wanted to work for.  It was risky to turn down their offer and spend 3L year without trying to secure a job.  It was risky to turn down a prestigious clerkship when it fell into my lap (and, of the above, the only decision I think might have been wrong).  It was risky not to sign up for BAR-BRI, and instead trust myself to pass the Maine and Massachusetts bar exams.  It was risky to join forces with one of my venture capital mentors to try to start a biotech company right before September 11th changed the capital markets considerably.  It was risky to go with the small bankruptcy firm rather than the two big firms that were courting me.  [And love of risk was why I was interested in bankruptcy in the first place -- what better place to learn about risk than in bankruptcy court?] 

So that's what my younger self would say.  You haven't just learned this recently.  You've known this for some time.

And perhaps she's right.  But I think something has changed in the past 18 months, about the way I think about myself.  A lot of the decisions I made before were still pretty safe.  I wanted to watch risk takers, and to be near them, studying them, but I wanted a safety net, something familiar.  I suppose I still do, but that need for reassurance and security is getting smaller.  Maybe this has to do with some of the other things on the list -- the realization that I bounce back.  The realization that people are kind.  The realization that I am not my job.  The realization that I reach people, and make friends.  All of these things make failure seem less devastating.  I am the author of my own story -- I don't have to play a part.  And inventing the story can be fun, and even when it sucks and things don't work out, that's interesting too.  And I won't lose the people who love me. Maybe I'll even manage to reach more people who love me, even if my path is bumpy and not a well-trod path of predictable, conventional success. 

The truth is that I have many personalities.  I've got an anarchist punk kid who wants to upturn the old, conventional ways, to give the world the finger just because.  I've got a quick-minded inventor, endlessly generating ideas, who just wants to do mental gymnastics all day.  I've got a curious explorer who wants to learn and see and experience everything.  I've got a free-spirit artist who wants to be around beauty and to live with her senses, to smell flowers and taste mangoes and wear cashmere and dance.  I've got a competitor who wants to figure out the game and win it, whatever it is.  I've got a prestige-monger Yale snob in a blue blazer who wants to rub shoulders with the elite and to be esteemed and respected and invited into the most exclusive worlds.  I've got a little old lady who lived through the depression and wrings her hands and squirrels money under the mattress and is afraid all the time of losing everything and being cast out, alone, and starving.  The truth is these guys are constantly battling for control all the time.  They form unlikely alliances depending on the different decisions I can make.  Sometimes the Yale snob and the free spirit artist see good in the same thing -- one because it's prestigious, the other because it affords an opportunity for luxury.  Sometimes the little old lady and the competitor are on the same page, because if I can finish first in my law school class surely I'll have some options.  Sometimes the punk and the explorer team up, because neither of them are interested in something they've seen before.  Etc.  And after these little inner elves wrestle one another to the floor and one of them grabs the control panel and I make a decision, some of the guys who didn't get their way try to mitigate it.

Anyway, we've gotten off the track a little bit, and now you probably think I'm schizophrenic.  Perhaps I am, a little, but I've gotten to like myself and understand myself a bit more now that I've started to see the way I have all these inner drives and how they tug me in different directions.  What's begun to happen over the last few years, though, is that these guys have become more comfortable with one another.  The teenage anarchist realizes that sometimes the Yale snob can get me inside an organization where I'll be able to effect much bigger change than if I groused about it from the outside.  Sometimes turning things upside down happens gradually.  The little old lady who wants predicatability and security has started to relax -- she sees I have family and friends and I'm staying in a geographic area and so even if things go wrong, they can't go too terribly wrong.  The prestige hound has begun to admire entrepreneurs and writers and artists and inventors more than guys in skyscrapers with big expense accounts and fancy wristwatches. 

All of this makes it easier to contemplate being a risk taker, rather than just admiring risk takers.  Maybe I always was one.  I'll grant that to my younger self.  Perhaps she's right that I always knew I liked risk.  But I'm less conflicted about it.  The parts of me that were terrified are still there, but they don't govern me so much, and their terror is not so great.

Comments

Wow. This was a great post. I've been following your blog for at least a year now. You are very inspiring. The decisions you made to become the woman you were 18 months ago were very risky (non-pedigree law school, etc.). And I say that b/c I am a risk-averse person who yearns to be more care free sometimes. And the woman you are now (18 months of hindsight added) is a very exciting person. Kudos to you. I enjoy your blog.

Aristotle talked about this stuff. Basically he said that every person had competing aspects of their personality, and that whatever life they chose, some parts of the personality would be supressed, and others would become stronger, more controlling. Given that you couldn't live the perfect life (alowing all parts of your personality full reign), the best way to live life was to choose a life that allowed reasonable hope of a stable friendship among the different parts, among the parts to be abandoned or subordinated and the parts to become more central in your life.

So, congradulations. You worked this stuff out for yourself. Very cool.

[Richard Ames]

"The truth is that I have many personalities."

I've represented some folks who live at the state hospital who've privately told me this about themselves. To actually blog it shows an uncommon degree of acceptance.

;)

How thirst-quinchingly refreshing to know that other people have the same daily struggles with the various personalities of themselves...and willingly admit it. It can sometimes be painstakingly frustrating, and other other times unmistakingly exhilrating to have personalities within oneself. I applaud you on having the courage to talk about these various personalities, love and embrace them and somehow allow them to all co-habitat while still staying sane.

As a first time reader I will return hopefully to again be filled with the fresh air of the truth!

How thirst-quinchingly refreshing to know that other people have the same daily struggles with the various personalities of themselves...and willingly admit it. It can sometimes be painstakingly frustrating, and other other times unmistakingly exhilrating to have personalities within oneself. I applaud you on having the courage to talk about these various personalities, love and embrace them and somehow allow them to all co-habitat while still staying sane.

As a first time reader I will return hopefully to again be filled with the fresh air of the truth!