Oscar winning Mexican/Kenyan actress and activist Lupita Nyong’o said,
“It’s only when you risk failure that you discover things. When you play it safe, you’re not expressing the utmost of your human experience.”
Risk taking is the daily business of the pioneer. I’m not talking about the careless abandon of the arrogant and the unconcerned, nor even the calculated, strategic step toward a particular desired outcome. I’m thinking here about an attitude to the whole of life, a mindset that sees the very purpose of life as going beyond what is known and measurable. The Pritchett consultancy, who work with over 90% of the Fortune 500 companies in the US say,
“[The] pioneering mindset will produce a few more failures. You’ll try some things that don’t pan out. That’s fine. So long as you make only new mistakes, you’re learning. The important thing is to experiment, explore, and operate with a sense of adventure. Change invites us into the unknown. Go there bravely.”
“…operate with a sense of adventure” I wonder if this is the key work of the pioneer? To do all that we do with a sense of adventure, whatever it is and whatever the outcome.
I remember a conversation with a leading Bishop a few years ago. He saw pioneering as one tool in the toolbox, to be deployed when the context called for it. Pioneers were called into action when the other available tools were not “successful” in that context, the goal was the same as ever. For me, this misses the prophetic dimension of the pioneer, the work of going bravely into the unknown for its own sake. Of course, it’s difficult to measure the value and success of adventuring! And I’m not trying to elevate the status of the pioneer. But, as Thomas Merton in his ‘Message to Poets’ wrote,
“Let us be proud of the words that are given to us for nothing, not to teach anyone, not to confute anyone, not to prove anyone absurd, but to point beyond all objects into the silence where nothing can be said”
As we come to the end of the holiday season and begin the journey to Bethlehem, may we do so with a sense of adventure, not bound up in the need to produce and be successful but with the expectation of meeting God in the unknown, confident that that is more than enough.