sculptor or geneticist if at the same time she manages
to be a good wife, good mother, good-looking, good-
tempered, well-groomed, and unaggressive.
LESLIE M. MCINTYREThere is the risk you cannot afford to take, [and] there
is the risk you cannot afford not to take.
PETER DRUCKERWe listen to other people’s ideas of what is self-
destructive without ever looking at whether their self and
our self have similar needs. Caught in the Virtue Trap, we
refuse to ask ourselves, “What are my needs? What would I
do if it weren’t too selfish?”
Are you self-destructive?
This is a very difficult question to answer. To begin with,
it requires that we know something of our true self (and that
is the very self we have been systematically destroying).
One quick way to ascertain the degree of drift is to ask
yourself this question: what would I try if it weren’t too
crazy?
- Sky diving, scuba diving.
- Belly dancing, Latin dancing.
- Getting my poems published.
- Buying a drum set.
- Bicycling through France.
If your list looks pretty exciting, even if crazy, then you