Allow me to deviate from the technical world for a bit.  I am not a huge Star Trek fan, but I saw pieces of this episode at a retreat one weekend.  It is a great illustration of one important aspect of life, so I put this clip together.

Let me set the stage for the video clip.  Captain Picard received a mechanical heart as a young  cadet due to being impaled through his real heart during a bar fight.  Many years later, he is now the Captain of the USS Enterprise and has just “died” due to a power surge causing that mechanical heart to malfunction.  At this point, he is met by a man named “Q”, who is sort of a God figure in the series.  Q is outside of time and space and has mystical powers.  This allows Q to provide Picard the ability to go back in time, change his choices and “save” his life later on. 

The big picture is that we are all given two choices.  On one hand, we have the opportunity to play it safe, reduce risk and ride the status quo.  On the other hand, we can choose to live life as the men and women we were created to be – taking risks, stretching ourselves and entering into the adventure of the unknown, driven by the passions and complete capabilities of all we can be.  The choice is ours and as simple as it sounds, it can get complicated and be clouded with fog and fear.  The decision to throw caution to the wind and go after the things in our hearts can be both exciting and fearful.  It comes easy for some and is painstaking for others.  Finding the balance between responsibility and recklessness, commitment and compulsion, planning and peril is difficult.  All too often we fall into the fear of making that one detrimental mistake.  As we get some success in life, we fear “blowing it” in a big way and often, we end up leaning more and more toward the side of playing it safe.  However, there is a universal truth, that when we spend too much time reducing, removing and relinquishing risk from our lives, we are missing something great and powerful.  The big picture of life proves this time and time again.  As we look around, we can see the affects of choosing too much “safety”.  We all have powerful dreams, desires and capabilities set deep within each of us.  The results of not living those out is more detrimental than any alternative.

Play the video and ask yourself which Picard you would rather be... which Picard are you right now?