Of Risk and Certainty (or the lack of it)

Risk is a word often associated with uncertainty and chaos and sometimes as a harbinger to failure. Not all of us wish risk coming in our way and most of what we do everyday is a means of subduing risk in any form. Fortunately, there are those of us who think otherwise, who think of risk as an opportunity to be taken advantage of. Had it not been for the few who think unconventionally, we would not see the world evolving and changing (hopefully for better) everyday. We would not have realized the enormity of human thought and the power of dreams. We would not have seen nations and forms of administrations and businesses evolve, multi billion dollar organizations come up and weave the world with a magical web.

Every risk presents an opportunity. We can be quite sure that it took a lot of valor and fortitude on the part of those who chose the road less taken to live life king-size. What it takes to understand the risks involved and conquer them by converting them into opportunities is a great vision and imagination that has the power to distort reality in one's favor. If risk were to to be treated as a market today, it's value is well beyond any gargantuan estimate that anyone on the Street can come up with.

It's funny that many times one's risk turns out to be others' opportunity. Many businesses today thrive on the fact that as organizations are growing complex, so are their risks. Consulting is one such business (and I'm proud to be a part of it :)

While risk may be desirable, uncertainty isn't. May be it is what makes some people shy away from taking risk. Like every good flower comes with a thorn (a dialogue from Albela by Govinda who sees Ash's aunt coming along with her: "Jaanta nahin Bhagwan har phool ke saath kaante kyon deta hain"!), every risk has uncertainty associated with it. This is what probably decides who deserves and who don't. Converting uncertainty to a desired certainty is a challenge and needs ability to predict and foresee things and change them into one's favor. This part of the process needs a great detail and demands a separate post, I will come up with it soon.

While some forms of uncertainty need to be tackled, some other forms are better avoided. Life inherently presents a lot of uncertainty and it may not be prudent on our part to buy additional such elements that make it an imbroglio. We encounter many such elements daily and it takes some judgment on our part to keep ourselves away from them. It is not fair to leave ourselves to the hands of uncertainty when there are people who care about what we do with our lives.
We can't be certain of what kinds of uncertainty unfolds into certainty that we desire, but life has it's own way of letting us know as time passes- just that we should not be foolhardy about it :)