{"id":9892,"date":"2014-11-12T07:23:27","date_gmt":"2014-11-12T15:23:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/?p=9892"},"modified":"2014-11-10T10:29:39","modified_gmt":"2014-11-10T18:29:39","slug":"open-space-dont-let-risk-taking-become-a-forgotten-art","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/2014\/11\/12\/open-space-dont-let-risk-taking-become-a-forgotten-art\/","title":{"rendered":"Open Space<\/em>: Don\u2019t let risk-taking become a forgotten art"},"content":{"rendered":"

Hitchhiking has developed a bad reputation, bringing to mind greasy, smelly hippies or murderous rapists looking to steal your car and harm your person.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t believe these fears are grounded and I maintain an indiscriminate policy on picking up hitchers.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
We say no to more and more as the years go on (photo provided).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I don\u2019t have altruistic motives. I pick them up because sometimes they give me gas money; sometimes they drive for a few hours while I nap. Mostly though, I pick them up because they are usually an outrageous group of people I would not normally interact with.<\/p>\n

My last hitchhiker, Steve, was extraordinary.<\/p>\n

Steve\u2019s parents abandoned him when he was 13. After living in Ontario group homes for a few years, his roommate burned down the house they were in and Steve was blacklisted as a result. He spent the next year living in a park with some friends with whom he formed a heavy metal band.<\/p>\n

Eventually, Steve saved up some cash from working at McDonald\u2019s to get a place with some other people who promptly robbed him. Next, his best friend went to jail for a year, and on day one after getting outside, the friend died in his sleep on Steve\u2019s couch.<\/p>\n

With nothing tying him down to that town anymore, he started hitching across Canada.<\/p>\n

That story took four hours, during which I was riveted, and he said none of it with a trace of anger or despair. He was boundlessly excited about seeing the ocean for the first time and was bouncing out of his seat when we drove across the Port Mann Bridge. Where in life would you ever hear a story like that with such joy?<\/p>\n

Which brings me to my point: we gain much from opportunities explored and \u201crisks\u201d taken, often unintentionally. My selfish motives don\u2019t change the fact that I engage with and aid these people and they, at the very least, give me a good story to tell.<\/p>\n

By closing off and clamouring for the safest, surest, and most sanitized life possible, we miss out on more than we realize.<\/p>\n

More and more, we close up because the risks are \u201ctoo high.\u201d Can\u2019t let the kids play in the park, might get hurt. Can\u2019t drink that unpasteurized milk, might get sick. Can\u2019t talk to that stranger, might get embarrassed.<\/p>\n

We may be cutting risk, but we\u2019re also cutting out joy, growth, and humanity.<\/p>\n

So the next time life presents you with a scary, messy way to engage with it, don\u2019t ask, \u201cWhat\u2019s the risk?\u201d Try asking, \u201cWhat\u2019s the reward?\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Hitchhiking has developed a bad reputation, bringing to mind greasy, smelly hippies or murderous rapists looking to steal your car and harm your person. I don\u2019t believe these fears are grounded and I maintain an indiscriminate policy on picking up hitchers. I don\u2019t have altruistic motives. I pick them up because sometimes they give me […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":9893,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[14,135],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9892","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-views","category-november-12-2014"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9892","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9892"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9892\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9894,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9892\/revisions\/9894"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9893"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9892"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9892"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9892"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}