One of the interesting aspects of life that I find, is second chances. A second chance is almost planned into our lives by default or so it seems. It starts I suppose with our potty training as babies and continues on throughout our lives until we finally pass on. Some of us even have repeat the death experience, getting a second chance. Perhaps we are not as much a bystander in our own passing as it appears from the sidelines.
Some people I have noticed never use their second chance. They are too timid, or too something to even use their first chance. It seems they miss out on so much in life. It has to be something they develop after their formal schooling is complete. No one is let out of school because they quit trying after failing the third grade, or any grade for that matter. We are forced to keep on trying until either someone feels sorry for us and passes us, or we finally learn those things we need to learn to go on the next grade.
What I am not to sure of is when and how we start not trying, or giving up before we have to. There are so many people around me who have have worn the same style of clothing all their adult life, have never taken a risk, or have refused to taste a food that their Mom didn’t feed them as babies. In short they have never taken a risk that they were not forced into and had no choice but to take.
What happened in the life of someone who just stops in their late teens and never tries anything new again? What could possibly have happened that was so terrible that they choose never to do anything different than what they do already. I can not imagine something so painful that people stop and if they can help it life never changes again.
I think that would be such a dull confining world, especially in the friends, and romance department. Friends are rarely forever as much as we would like them to be. Unfortunately life changes whether we like it too or not, and friends do too. We move, move on, take on new interests, get married, get divorced, the list goes on and on. Friends move, spouses wake up and decide the life they are living is not for them any longer, and they leave. For whatever reason these adverse to risk people go on without trying to change their situation.
The same problem I see happening daily with our career choices. It is a uncommon today to know someone that has worked the same job all their working career. Companies grow, grow old, are bought up or simply stop being. Changes in the way things are done make some jobs obsolete. Changes in peoples thinking make other jobs fade away. I remember when the wearing of furs was a sign of prosperity. Now it’s in very bad taste to walk down the street covered in some animal’s skin.
How do people who refuse to change, or try something new adapt? Is it a life stressor for them to have their schedule interrupted by something they had no control over? Are they okay with making changes in their life only if they are forced into it? Or perhaps they just omit from their day that portion of life that no longer exits? They simply go into a holding pattern of doing nothing in that time when they used to do something?
Very few of us really like change. For the most part we like our world to be comfortable and predictable. We enjoy our schedules, calendars, and routine. Then again when most of us have to change, we grit our teeth, steel our nerves and do what has to be done. Perhaps there is a benefit to the human race, always having a few people on each end of the spectrum, and most of us clumped in the middle. I just may not have noticed it yet.
