Only a Person Who Dares Take Risks Can Grow, Be Called Free

Published April 18, 1985. I was sitting in a church service not long ago. The closing hymn was “Abide With Me,” one common to many Christian communities. As we were singing the hymn, a phrase caught my attention. It went as follows:

“Earth’s joys grow dim: its glories pass away; Change and decay in all around I see.”

It was the comment on change that interested me. Henry F. Lyte, who wrote the words to “Abide With Me,” equated change with decay. His thinking was undoubtedly reflective of his times and suggested that things were better during a former period. As changes occurred, situations and people were, according to Lyte, worse off.

The tendency to idealize the past was not peculiar to Henry F. Lyte. Nor was it restricted to religious thought. Sociologists Ogburn and Nimkoff have noted the tendency to do the same with marriage and family life. It is what they call The Western Family of Nostalgia.

The two sociologists suggest we tend to look to the past and long for previous times. Family life, they observe, was supposedly best many years ago, during pioneer times through the post-depression era. The popular television programs The Waltons and Little House on the Prairie have made real these beliefs by portraying close, loving families during earlier times.

According to Ogburn and Nimkoff, some people still believe that marriage and family life was best then, and any change from that era has supposedly only brought about disorganization and chaos, even decay. Once again, any change or departure from the past is only thought to be for the worse.

I’m not sure, if we could choose, most of us would return to the past and live in previous times.  Must marriage and family life be exactly like it was in the past? Can change be for the better? Some like living in the present and believe we can experience the close, loving relationships portrayed in the Waltons and Little House on the Prairie during contemporary times. The environment and society do not necessarily determine family life. It is done by conscientious choice and effort no matter the time and place.

Perhaps one of the reasons we are afraid of change is that we do not want to take risks or upset the status quo. And there is good reason not to risk. It is indeed that, a risk. In trying to change we may lose something we have. In being willing to risk, however, we may also change and gain something we don’t have.

The necessity of risk and change in life is noted in these few lines by William Arthur Ward:

To laugh is to risk appearing the fool,

To weep is to risk appearing sentimental,

To reach out for another is to risk involvement,

To expose feeling to risk exposing your true self,

To place your ideas, your dreams before the crowd is to risk their loss,

To love is to risk not being loved in return,

To live is to risk dying,

To hope is to risk despair,

To try is to risk failure.

But risk must be taken, because the greatest hazard in life is to risk nothing.

The person who risks nothing does nothing, has nothing and is nothing.

He may avoid suffering and sorrow, 
But he simply cannot learn, feel, change, grow, love, or live.

Chained by his certitudes, he is a slave, he has forfeited freedom.

Only a person who risks – is free.

Only the person who risks can grow.