I’m a(n overuser) of the Elroy Dimson quote that “Risk means more things can happen than will happen.”

Mostly as a reminder that you can’t predict the future, so you’d better get comfortable with all the ways you’ll be wrong, and see if you can develop some skill for getting just one potential path, partway right.

Dennis E Taylor might be going in the books right below Dimson now with my new favorite follow-up.

Taylor says, “All actions have risks. Most inactions even more so.”

The thread here, what runs through it all, is the composition of expectations as reality. It’s about the stories of where we are and where we’re going. That’s deeper than just whatever is real. It’s a more honest take on the nuance of reality.

If we shift that focus, to having an awareness of the constantly shifting state of our expectations, and however they constitute whatever we call reality - there’s only one thing left.

Choices.

Everybody’s got choices (not gonna do it, not gonna do it, not gonna…. NOPE. err, fine. YUP.)

So in the future, there are more things than can happen than will happen.

In the present, we have to hold that range of potentialities in our heads and choose.

We won’t get it all right.

But opting for inaction, or letting others make decisions for us, comes with its own risks.

It’s best to be an active participant in our own lives. That agency is kind of everything.

It’s the agency that grants us the power to look for alignment, between who we are today and where we’re going, name what we want, accept the reality of variance (because we can’t predict the future) all so we can choose where to put our next foot down and proceed.

I want people to know it’s there, and I want them to take it.

Because, as E-40 will tell you, “Everybody’s got choices…”