7 & 7: Bold vs. Cautious

REFLECTION:

Daring to fail is a sign of greatness. To be challenged and in the center of controversy, to persist, is a measure of the person. Being on guard is all defense, watch and wait, watch and wait, while others take the offense, others run the gauntlet. The bold try something new for the very first time. If it tastes badly, they spit it out, and try another plate. Life is after all experience. The timid rarely reap rewards, nor should they having taken zero risk. Fortune does favor the bold. The bold take action in words as well as deeds. They say what others think, disrupting, disturbing, not out of harm or by intention but by simply telling the truth. They deserve neither disgrace nor separation from the whole. Rather they have earned a higher elevation for tearing off the cloth that hid the truth, for moving others down the path of needed change. The cautious wait in quiet to be assigned a task. The bold are always busy. The opportunities for leadership are piled high for lack of competition.

MUSES:

Only those who dare to fail greatly can ever achieve greatly.
Robert F. Kennedy

The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.
Martin Luther King, Jr.

You don’t learn to hold your own in the world by standing on guard, but by attacking, and getting well hammered yourself.
George Bernard Shaw

He was a bold man that first ate an oyster.
Jonathan Swift

Do not be too timid and squeamish about your actions. All life is an experience.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Fortune favours the bold.
Terence

To know how to say what others only know how to think is what makes men poets or sages; and to dare to say what others only dare to think makes men martyrs or reformers or both.
Elizabeth Charles

No great man ever complains of want of opportunity.
Ralph Waldo Emerson