Epiphanies come from the silliest places

So yesterday, I was playing Street Fighter with thello (with him handing me my rear end, as usual), and he gave me tips along the way. The thing about playing thello is that I get scared sometimes because he's so good, and so I kept playing defensively. So, a couple of times during our session, he'd be like, "Don't forget to go on the offensive!" And I started doing that, and I started playing better.

And it occurs to me that I could also stand to do that in, well, life.

You see, I always plan to do things, but I almost always chicken out because I'm worried that bad things will happen to me. And so I calculate my every decision in such a way as to avoid negative possibilities, and so I almost never get anything I want.

In Street Fighter, going on the offensive is risky. There's always a chance that you'll do something embarassingly stupid, or that your timing will be off and your moves will get beat, or that there'll be some glaring flaw in your offense that you won't see until it's exploited, or that the opponent will simply know how to beat anything you try. But if you just sit there, merely blocking and trying to counter stuff all day, you won't win anyway. And besides, you know what they say about the best defense...

At the risk of sounding sappy, I think there's a definite lesson for me there.