Tag Archives: caution

Throw caution to the wind

Do it. Just go for it. Do you have a dream? Live it. Don’t think about it. Don’t give yourself any time to come up with all of those excuses and reasons for why you shouldn’t do it, or why it might not be responsible, how much money it would cost, who might get hurt along the way. Just get out there and go.

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Live a little. Live as recklessly as you want. I used to have this dream where I’d climb to the top of the Queensboro Bridge. But you know what happened? I didn’t do it. Why? I think that I thought about it too much. And now it’s already cemented in my brain, all of those thought processes, the whole scenario playing out in my head to the point where, even if I decided to go ahead with the climb, I’d immediately have a dozen or so very real visions of how it would go down, what I’d have to do to avoid all of those potential problems.

No, it’s all too premeditated by this point. I’d just wind up psyching myself out. You know what I should have done? I should have just started climbing the very second that I had the idea to climb it in the first place. Obviously it would have been convenient if I happened to be right underneath the bridge when the idea first popped into my head.

But it didn’t. I think I thought about it first when I was watching the third Batman movie, that scene where he climbs to the top to look out over the city. I was like, wow, that’s awesome, I want to do that. But then I got lost in the rest of the movie, and by the time the whole bridge idea finally resurfaced in my conscious thoughts, I was already too busy thinking stuff like, what are the police going to do when they arrest me? Am I going to get fired for missing work? If I apply for a new job, how am I going to explain this when I have to answer “yes” to that question that asks, “Have you ever been arrested?”

Just go for it. Throw caution to the wind. Has anybody ever said that to you in real life? To throw caution to the wind? I think I’ve only read it, it’s one of those cliché pieces of advice that everyone has floating around in their heads. But here it applies. Like at a restaurant. Don’t look at the menu. Just order. Just look at the waiter and say, “I’ll have the steak.” If he comes up to the table and says something like, “Would you like to hear about the specials?” just say, “I’ll have the special.”

If he continues, if he says, “We actually have several specials tonight,” don’t listen to him, your whole game is going to be shaken. If he tells you about specials one, two, and three, it won’t matter which one you’re ordering, because you’ll be thinking about how good the other two dishes would have been. And how do you know you made the right choice?

Just tell the waiter, “I’ll have the steak special.” No, better yet, go into the restaurant with really heavy duty earplugs, hand the waiter a piece of paper that says, “I’m not going to listen to you, nor will I look at the menu. Just bring me something awesome.”

Just live a little. Just go for it. Just throw all caution to the wind. Did I say that already? Well I’m saying it again. And if you’ve never heard that expression before, here it is, read it again. Now you’ve heard it twice.