What are you willing to take a big risk for? Is it possible to live life, and do creative work, without risk?

Lately, in my reading, I keep encountering the notion that a creative has to do work that involves an element of fear. If you are doing comfortable work, you are not doing interesting work –- interesting to you or anyone else. A life that will, inevitably, end. The point of life, in part, is to experience it in a deep way. To experience beauty. We grow by stretching ourselves. We grow through failure.

Our power as independent human beings derive, in part, from our relationship to risk. The ultimate risk is getting to the end of our lives and realizing that we haven’t really lived. Ask someone diagnosed with terminal cancer or early stage dementia what they know about security and risk.

In my journal, I ask myself about the role of risk in my life. Do I take on too much risk? It is difficult to get the amount of risk you take on to experience life in a deep way exactly right, but it is important to think it through.

Are there recurring patterns that, in retrospect, indicate that I take on risk just because I enjoy unpredictability and subconsciously seek it out for its own sake. To avoid boredom.

Seek inner peace -– the peace that places a priority on honoring and singing your song within -- and the road ahead becomes clearer.