On safety and success.

There are two fundamental dispositions: security and expansion. You can either be aimed toward not making mistakes or toward not missing opportunities. This is true in regards to money. This is true in regards to relationships. It’s even true of food, music, art and most everything in life, including ideas.

When it comes to truth and expression, some people rarely say anything new because they want to avoid making errors. Others are willing to explore untested ideas or formulations because they want to discover new insights. However, the avoid-error types like to pretend they have a corner on safety because they make fewer mistakes. But it’s just as unsafe to miss truth as it is to commit error.

In this way, baseball serves as a wonderful metaphor. See, an overly eager batter can strike out by swinging at bad pitches. But it’s also true that an overly cautious batter can strike out by looking at good ones. And suffice it to say that never swinging means never getting a hit at all. So the key is to swing wisely, since, as in life, there is no way to “bat safely.”