evaluating risk
I sat with a friend during the run of a show. We were both in our usher blacks and name tags. I had a homemade salad, he with his pa-se-ew. He was jealous of the homey and healthful look of my home lunch with garden grown veggies, and I took longing whiffs of garlic and soy sauce, impossible for me to even have a bite of, and the satisfying width of the rice noodles. Why do they never seem to sell those wide rice noodles in Asian Markets?
We were talking about risk taking. The particulars are not interesting, but his response was (to me).
"What you have to think about," he said, "when you are taking some kind of risk, is the consequences of that risk. The pros and the cons. If what you will gain or hope to gain by taking a risk is greater than the worst conceivable consequence, then do it."
Perhaps a mundane way of mulling over whether or not to risk, but I found the statement oddly clarifying. As if there could be a laminated card in my wallet I could pull out when I had to evaluate a complex situation.
Then strangely, my roommate did something that I thought was a stupid risk and the result was that she was kicked out of a show that she would have been great in, and that she now has a strained relationship with her mentor, who felt the need to punish her to the full letter of the law. Graduate school law in full bureaucratic glory.
Still, I knew where he was coming from. I understood why she had acted out, why she had not seemed repentant, but I did not agree with her and was frustrated by her actions. She told me she was proud that she had not begged forgiveness (which she claimed, probably rightly, would have softened his heart to give her a wrist slap instead of pulling her out of a production and taking her out of the casting pool). Maybe she doesn't doesn't want to be here anymore or doesn't want to do what people tell her, I don't know. Her actions and defenses are puzzling. Why work so hard for over 2 years only to get into such a difficult situation now. Anyway, it's none of my business.
We were talking about risk taking. The particulars are not interesting, but his response was (to me).
"What you have to think about," he said, "when you are taking some kind of risk, is the consequences of that risk. The pros and the cons. If what you will gain or hope to gain by taking a risk is greater than the worst conceivable consequence, then do it."
Perhaps a mundane way of mulling over whether or not to risk, but I found the statement oddly clarifying. As if there could be a laminated card in my wallet I could pull out when I had to evaluate a complex situation.
Then strangely, my roommate did something that I thought was a stupid risk and the result was that she was kicked out of a show that she would have been great in, and that she now has a strained relationship with her mentor, who felt the need to punish her to the full letter of the law. Graduate school law in full bureaucratic glory.
Still, I knew where he was coming from. I understood why she had acted out, why she had not seemed repentant, but I did not agree with her and was frustrated by her actions. She told me she was proud that she had not begged forgiveness (which she claimed, probably rightly, would have softened his heart to give her a wrist slap instead of pulling her out of a production and taking her out of the casting pool). Maybe she doesn't doesn't want to be here anymore or doesn't want to do what people tell her, I don't know. Her actions and defenses are puzzling. Why work so hard for over 2 years only to get into such a difficult situation now. Anyway, it's none of my business.