Leap Year

I had lunch with a good friend of mine. We’d known each other for a good few years now, and it’s safe to say that my rapport is an open book to us. As we proceeded to discuss about what our progress and what was going on with our lives, my friend evaluated.

“You never take chances.” That was concluded of me.

A glass broke somewhere. Or at least, that was how it felt. Sometimes it takes another person who’s not in the bubble to point out things that were already obvious otherwise. I’m not a risk taker, I realized. Everything that I have done is on the basis of being safe, and of sparing myself from any idea of failure. I am the woman who sits and wait for things to fall on her lap. I am that person who resists change.

The signs couldn’t be more obvious. I insisted on settling down in the same area of the city as the one I first landed in when I got a job, because I didn’t want to have to start over in a different place, with different people and a different grocery store. I used the same Goddamn vintage mobile phone until it broke into pieces that I had no choice but to get a new, smarter one. I got an offer to study in Paris two years ago, but wimped out at the last minute because the idea of me being alone in a foreign city with a language I didn’t understand was daunting to me. I never show my true emotions unless I’m 100% sure that my vulnerability will not be screwed over. I kept wearing the same backpack when traveling even when it’s so aged that one of the handles is longer than the other, because well, what if I don’t like the new one as much? I can’t seem to be crossing the line to the next phase of my life, because I see it as a cliff – if I jump I might never be able to come back.

I don’t take enough chances in life. What’s the cause of this? Possibly through years of experiencing or witnessing other people take that leap, only to crash and burn. It is an ugly scar that reminds me of the mess I’ll have to clean up if it didn’t work out. It is the fear of things not turning up the way I’d hoped them to be that stops me in my tracks.

But if I don’t take chances… well I’d imagine that life would be quite dull. I’ll carry on being exactly like I am right now, forever. I’m not saying right now isn’t great. But I have a feeling if things are still same ten years from today, I’ll be so bored with everything that I’ll eventually join some kind of community chess club. And nobody wants to end up there. That’s plateau-life territory.

So I guess I’ll try to take a bit of a risk. Let’s start with having a chicken sandwich instead of the usual egg tomorrow morning.