Take risks (but wear bug spray)

"We should be careful to get out of an experience only the wisdom that is in it - and stop there; lest we be like the cat that sits down on a hot stove-lid. She will never sit down on a hot stove-lid again - and that is well; but also she will never sit down on a cold one anymore." - Mark Twain, Following the Equator

Mark Twain has many great quotes, but this was my favorite from the book. It is not one of his more humorous quotes, but it encompasses one of the themes by which I live my own life. It boils down to essentially this: one must take risks to fully enjoy life.

Twain is telling us that we should learn from our experiences. For most people this is inevitable and comes as second nature. We learn and move on as to not let history repeat itself, although sometimes we do take a few times to truly learn the lesson at hand, like learning to always wear bug spray in the warm Texas mosquito-filled nights. When we go shopping and spend all our money and realize we are broke, we learn to budget money. When we fall in love and experience heartbreak, we learn to be guarded. The list goes on and on.

We gain wisdom throughout our lives, and we learn from our mistakes. Twain goes on to advise us, however, that we cannot stop truly living because we become overly cautious due to our experiences. It is OK to be careful, for that is the nature of learning. Yet there is a fine line between being careful and being over-careful, and we must not cross this line. 

If we try something new and fail or get hurt, we as humans have a tendency to retract our actions and ignore the past as if it never happened. We refuse to accept what happened or move on. We hide behind our fear and stay far away from that something which led to our failure. We become blind to the idea of taking that risk again, because we are afraid of failing for a second time. 

I agree with Twain that this is not the way to live a full and happy life. We need to take risks, fall in love, and try new foods in order to keep learning and gaining invaluable wisdom. We all are inherently curious creatures, and this curiosity needs to be fed with novel adventures. We cannot live as Twain's cat, too afraid to take the risk. We must step out of our comfort zones to experience life!