I enjoy reading many kinds of books, but "adventure non-fiction" is a favorite genre. From childhood, I've been attracted to tales of explorers of land and sea. Perhaps it started with Laura Ingalls Wilder's accounts of crossing vast prairies in covered wagons. My mom used to read to me each night from the "Little House" books. I read them so well and often that I felt like part of the Ingalls family.
More recently I've been enchanted by tales of the Arctic explorations (Endurance: Shackleton's Incredible Voyage by Alfred Lansing) and by dangerously deep wreck dives off the New Jersey coastline (Shadow Divers: The True Adventure of Two Americans Who Risked Everything to Solve One of the Last Mysteries of World War II by Robert Kurson). Memoirs of a boy soldier in Sierra Leone (A Long Way Gone by Ishmael Beah) and of Everest-expeditions Into Thin Air and a journey Into the Wild of Alaska steal my breath and my heart at the same time. What attracts me to these stories of adventure is not a desire to travel vicariously to faraway lands. I am compelled by adventure non-fiction because it impresses on me time and again the awareness that risk taking is crucial to a life of leadership.
Risk taking gets a bad rap. I mean, the term "risk taking" itself focuses on the negative (risk). Why not call it "possibility taking" or "opportunity taking" instead? Is it because we don't want to encourage people (ourselves or others) to break out and (gasp!) try something NEW? If we all tried something new, the world would be less predictable, less stable, less like it is and more like we make it. Hmm. Sounds good to me.
Where would a thoughtful bout of "possibility taking" lead you? Who knows. What I do know is you never know unless you commit to risk. Reflect on W. H. Murray's words in The Scottish Himalaya Expedition (1951) and then lead on.
"This may sound too simple, but is great in consequence. Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness. Concerning all acts of initiative (and creation), there is one elementary truth - the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans - that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then Providence moves too. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one's favor all manner of unforeseen incidents, meetings and material assistance, which no man could have dreamt would have come his way. I learned a deep respect for one of Goethe's couplets:
Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it.
Boldness has genius, power and magic in it!'"
