The laws inertia and entropy seem to apply as readily to how we live our life as to the material experiences around us. It’s easier to get inspired than motivated. It’s easier to get spun up about something new, than remain consistent with something old.
It’s easier to sit in a place of relative comfort than to risk the pursuit of something new.
But fear of the unknown or even of failure should not be the primary decision-making mechanism in our life. Obviously, this statement is constrained by common sense. But if you don’t risk at all … you can’t do anything.
Put another way, I broke my foot going from one step to the landing. In my own defense, I was going pretty fast, but if stairs can be a danger to one’s physical well-being … what isn’t? When examining our life, it is not any safer … and certainly not more fulfilling to simply sit.
It’s harder … but always more worthwhile to jump.
C.S. Lewis put it very well. He said, “To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket- safe, dark, motionless, airless–it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable.”
Or, like was posted in my old Boy Scout Hall: “A ship is safe in the harbor, but that’s not what ships are for.”