Is living without risk really living at all?

Taking my life in my hands — as we all do when getting out of bed — I walked along the Thames last week. On the northern footpath east of Blackfriars Bridge, a young man ran atop the adjacent wall and jumped across a gap in the brickwork. The gap was six feet long, the wall as high. Had he missed, he’d have met all manner of hazards on either side. He gained nothing overt from that leap, only an ephemeral sense of satisfaction, yet risked broken bones or a fractured skull. As he turned heel in preparation for repeating the feat, I was both aghast and impressed.

We could call that young man foolhardy. Yet I wager that an ‘ephemeral sense of satisfaction’ is precious to someone in his twenties, and could in time transfer to making leaps of a metaphorical sort later in a career. When I was young, I took an enormous leap of faith by committing to becoming a novelist — a risk of which I was under-aware at the time — which to most clued-up observers was foolhardy in the extreme.

The age group most inclined to elevate safety to the highest of virtues is the elderly. Old people are more physically fragile. The shank of their lives is behind them, including their own feats of derring-do. While there are many delightful exceptions, seniors as a cohort are most likely to value tranquillity and protection from harm over new exploits and adventures.

Societies also have stages of life. By locking down during the coronavirus pandemic (you knew I’d get to that), the whole western world has clung to safety above all else. We’ve willingly traded prosperity, functionality, joy, good company and the productive futures of upcoming generations for short-term security.