Contributed and written by my 14yr old daughter Kendyl
Some choose to be safe and take no risks. Others take risks and make mistakes. Would you take risks or do nothing? A wise person once said, “You learn from your mistakes.” I agree with that. Taking risks gives you knowledge, and you learn from it. Taking risks also helps you grow, but my favorite thing about risk-taking is giving you the opportunity to enjoy life. Risking things is something I’ve done my whole life. It’s so important to take risks but some people just don’t understand it.
Picture this, you are a small business owner and your business is failing. You have an idea to launch a new and improved product that no one has ever seen before. Two options, one you can play safe and just let it go, or you can take a risk. Say you launched your product, the product could work and save your business. You could sell that product more and more, take more and more risks, fails some, win some, and eventually be a hotshot CEO. Looking back it was all because you took that one risk.
Now you know what works and what doesn’t work. Also, you can find out what you like and don’t like. Trying a food you’ve never tried before, wearing a color you don’t normally wear, and others of course but those are all harmless risks that you can take. Apart from learning about yourself. Taking risks helps you learn about others. Asking your close friend about something they did wrong, risking your relationship with them to find out the truth. You learned that they wronged you and you moved from that. You learned that taking a risk can help learn about things in the world.
Apart from learning, taking risks lets you have fun. Most people get scared and don’t want to do anything. Taking that one risk doing that one thing can make one adrenaline-filled adventure. Cliff jumping per se, taking that risk. You can take other risks too, dangerous risks. Not the dangerous ones like physical pain, but emotional pain. Telling your crush you like them, one you could get rejected, two you could be rejected and your crush tells all of their friends, the possibilities are endless. But there always is that one chance that maybe they like you back. If that’s not an adrenaline rush I don’t know what is. Taking an action-packed risk comes with a downside, the punishment later. Playing a game or going to a theme park and walking around. Most likely you will wake up so sore the next day. You could be doing something against the rules, having all of that fun just to have the punishment later. Is it worth the 5 minutes of freedom and happiness for the punishment you receive later?
Other than learning small things and taking adrenaline-filled adventures, some people take extreme risks. Some that protect our country, or keep us safe. In the military, they take risks every day. They take those risks for the greater good though. The military takes risks involving their people. Sending soldiers away for battle, possibly injuring them to protect us. Not just that but they get sick, soldiers have to travel the world. There are so many different diseases that they can catch around the world.
Not just in the military though, scientists take risks and explorationists. Scientists had to find a vaccine that works against COVID-19. They had to test the vaccine to make sure it worked. Scientists risked failure to see if the solution would work. Explorationist work to uncover new things. They risk an unsafe mission for knowledge of learning about the world we live in today. The military keeps the US safe, taking those kinds of risks comes naturally to them.
Taking risks helps you learn, enjoy the new experiences, and helps the world grow. Do you agree with what the wise person said that from mistakes you grow? I think we all have taken a risk in our life, good or bad. So what do you think? Risks or no risks?
