As a young adult, you build a life carefully. You prepare for a career. You choose an appropriate partner. You accrue responsibility. You achieve. You optimize.
You do what is expected of a serious person.
At midlife, something shifts. You begin to want what cannot be optimized. You crave something more alive. You know that’s something that might cost you.
The word reckless comes from the now-forgotten verb to reck—to care, to pay heed, to worry. We’ve lost the word reckful, but we still live by it. Reckful means careful, cautious, controlling. It means arranging your life so that nothing unexpected can enter.
Reckfulness built your first life. It will not build the next one.
At midlife, you are ready to choose recklessness.
Today, I risk being changed by what I cannot control.