As we age, I think many women are more prepared and open to taking major risks in their lives. Our life experiences help us to gauge the level of risk and the worth to us of the undertaking.
Of course, I do not refer to foolish impulse or ill-thought-out risk of the daredevil variety, or risk that would impact or endanger others. In my research, Gloria Steinem in her book "Revolution from Within," tells of one woman who had always feared flying. She came to a point in her life where she knew it was time to break out of old patterns and she decided that she would conquer her fear and learn to fly. She accomplished that and then applied the principles to her life in general. She found herself able to "solo" intellectually and ended up working on a project for MS Magazine that has helped reduce the reliance by colleges on ambiguous SAT scores when evaluating students for admission. It followed that the validity of other standardized test scores have come into question as well. AN ASIDE: (I hope our President looks into this before his new education improvement project places an unreasonable and unjustified burden on our teachers and that he discovers the fact that there are many outside influences over which a teacher has no control that influence the outcome of these tests. He's usually very sharp and does his homework on issues and hope he takes the same care with this initiative.)
Some women have turned to an Outward Bound-type experience to overcome old fears and learn to let go of the unimportant. Suzanne Braun Levine, the first editor of MS Magazine and author of "Inventing the Rest of Our Lives," took that route and learned that holding everything together, being in control, isn't everything. Taking charge is about coping with the unexpected. She advises asking yourself, "What's the worst that can happen?" Usually what we imagine isn't what happens at all.
