July 18th, 2008
Questions for a Pop Can
There is every reason to talk yourself out of opening the pop can. What about slightly more important risks in your life?
Transcriptorial: What if it fizzes over, leaves me sticky / but thirsty? What if I don't truly want it? / What if it pinches me, snaps off, / leaves tin, blood, and a crack to make the rest go flat?
Even breathing is risky.
Without risks, how boring would our lives be?
Absolutely.
The gain of opening up a pop can is small, but the risks are smaller. It’s a matter of weighing the risks of any action with what you get out of it. And of course, emotions love to ruin neat little equations like that, too.
So true. Even the smallest animals have been shown to act irrationally, to expend too much effort and risk on too little, to worry too much about a thing they fixate upon. Ants, even, will fight harder for the food they have already touched than for the equivalent food right next to them.
I am sometimes paralyzed by small choices and decisive in big ones.
If the stupid tab busts off, I use my church key. Yeah, I carry a Swissknife with can and bottle tools. Meh… And I prefer bottles to cans anyway.
Yeah well, sometimes I do things that are slightly harder, slightly more dangerous than normal, just to feel good about myself.
That’s something, right?