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Excerpt

n this mid-30s, with a new son, mortgage and Maytag washer-dryer, the author's thoughts turned to risk. Would he be taking any more of them? Or would risk taking be going the way of his Elvis Presley collection and twenty-eight inch waist?

He wondered if others were interested in this subject as well: risks, what they are, who takes them, and why. Many were. When the subject arose, one old friend of thirty-eight, a father of three, mentioned going to an amusement park recently in search of a good scare. That failing, he'd started taking flying lessons.

A newly married woman of the same age said taking risks wasn't something she was "into." "I don't even cross the street when the sign says 'Don't Walk,' " she explained. The woman wondered if she had a problem.

The most typical response was that of a middle-aged secretary. "I'd like to read something about risk taking," she told me. "Maybe it would help me take some.

This book is about risk taking. It is not intended as yet another tract urging one and all to "take more risks!" Presumably most of us would like to. Except we don't know how. Nor is it clear what "risk" means. Getting married? Starting a business? Leaping from an airplane with a parachute? Without one? Getting out of bed in the morning?

The last is not facetious. Among a wide range of definitions I've seen, one woman said that "risk" to her meant just that.

I came to feel that much of what we imagine to be courageous risk taking may actually reflect a need for stimulation that is best satisfied by living dangerously. And that less gaudy risks that are low in stimulation may in fact be the more daunting ones to take.

My approach overall is to suggest that the best way to take more risks is to first determine what "risk" means to you. Only when we understand how we perceive risk personally can we proceed to determine which risks we'd actually like to take.

This is why defining "risk" is so much more than a semantic exercise. Repeatedly I've discovered that those who are apparently taking big risks turned out on closer examination to to be risking little; little of value that is. (Question: If you risk a life you don't value, have you taken a risk?) They themselves were often the first to admit this. By contrast, the very, very many who denied taking any risks routinely turned to be daring indeed, in ways they seldom recognized.

There's not a hero in this book. Like all of us, everyone written about is taking some risks and avoiding others. Often the risks we avoid say more about who we are than those we take. And when we do take risks it's not always clear -- even to ourselves -- what is is we're risking, what's actually at stake.

RISKLETS

Compare which "risklets" you've taken with the percentages of those who filled out a questionnaire for Chancing It.

• Leaving home on a dark, cloudy day without a raincoat or umbrella (79% have dared this)

• Driving a car whose gas gauge registers EMPTY (69%)

• Striking a match from a folder without first closing the cover (66%)

• Use a fork or knife to get stuck bread out of a toaster (49%)

• Driving through a STOP sign late at night at an uncrowded intersection (47%)

• Drinking a beer while driving (43%)

• Operating a garbage disposal without a lid (38%)

• Lighting a gas oven that has been on for several seconds (37%)

• Standing on the platform between two cars of a moving train (36%)

• Putting off paying bills you can afford to pay until threatening notices begin to arrive (29%)

• Turning on an electrical appliance while taking a bath or shower (24%)

• Operating a power mower while barefoot or in sandals (24%)