Why risk is so important?

The general assumption is that risk is important, but sometimes I think that we should just pause to think about why we agree that risk is so important. I thought I would just outline why I think it is important.

• You cannot be creative without taking a risk.
• You cannot discover your limits without taking a risk.
• You cannot declare or consumate a relationship without taking a risk.
• You cannot be passionate about anything without taking a risk.
• You cannot lead without taking a risk.
• I am sure I or you could add to this list, but interestingly, physical risk is only a small part of the issue.
• The need for risk crosses all boundaries (much like play itself).
• It is not gender specific, though the types of risk favoured may be .
• It is not racially specific, though different cultures do have different attitudes.
• It has nothing to do with ability or disability. Indeed it is probably more important the less able bodied a person is.

Perhaps most importantly the fulfilment of the individual is dependant on their capacity to take risks, which makes the capicity to manage and enjoy risk taking a vital building block of cohesive and vibrant communities. Risk entails almost certainly the experience of failure (unrequited love, a friendship rejected, a fall from a step misjudged); the inevitability of making mistakes, of being thwarted in one's endeavours, of not meeting a challenge one has set oneself.

In other words, concepts such a 'resilience' and 'self-confidence' come to life, in part, through pain (physical/emotional) and failure. What follows, is that we must take care not to prevent every fall (physical/emotional), nor attempt to intervene to prevent every mistake about to be made.

You cannot develop resilience in the absence of having somthing to be resilient about. You cannot get up and dust yourself down, if you have never stumbled.

Play provision needs to articulate more clearly, more robustly - and publicly - what nurturing reslience and self-confidence necessarily entails. Much of the current language deployed to describe what play provision is trying to do is bland and meaningless to the point of distraction. We need the confidence to deploy a vocabularly that is not scared to roll up its sleeves. - PLAYLINK / Free Play Network