To laugh is to risk appearing a fool.
To weep is to risk appearing sentimental.
To reach out for another person is to risk involvement.
To expose one’s feelings is to risk rejection.
To place your dreams before the crowd is to risk ridicule.
To love is to risk not being loved in return.
To go forward in the face of overwhelming odds is to risk failure.
But risks must be taken, because the greatest hazard in life is to risk nothing.
The person who risks nothing does nothing, has nothing, and is nothing.
He may avoid sufferings and sorrows, but he cannot learn,
feel, change, grow, or love.
Chained by his certitudes, he is a slave.
He has forfeited his freedom.
Only a person who takes risks is free.
~ Leo Buscaglia

Certain “certitudes” bind me, and under their spells I become a slave, bending over and gritting my teeth with their lacerating lashings. I am chained by my past, unable to breathe and unable to feel, thinking that all that has ever been is all that will ever be. I am given the opportunity to take off the iron shackles, but yet I continue to turn my face from freedom. What is it that frightens me? It is the fear that freedom is hopeless, that where lies freedom, therein lies suffering. I am afraid to risk, for every time I have risked, I have been hurt. I am afraid to place my dreams before others, afraid to go forward in the face of overwhelming odds, afraid to reach out for others, afraid to expose my feelings, afraid to love. I am afraid of this because there is the great chasm of risk that must be leapt. A part of me screams to leap that chasm and see what happens; maybe my fears will die and my “certitudes” crushed to powder. Another part of me whispers, “Every time you have leapt before, you’ve just been more bloodied, beaten, and marred than before. You’re just going to get hurt.” So I can either leap the chasm, embracing either pain in defeat or joy in victory… or I can remain among those quiet, timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat.