Life is, to a large extent, forgiving. The mistakes we commit are mostly not "end-all". This should allow us to take a few liberties and motivate us to experiment with things that our heart wants in the short duration we spend on this planet. Inspite of this, a vast majority of us, let life pass without trying anything different than what our forefathers did. Why is that?

By experimentation, I mean the kind of things that give us a chance for making a positive change to our life and/or the lives of people around us. As children, we don't hesitate to experiment. As children, we break stuff, touch things we haven't seen before, and don't even hesitate to put weird things inside our mouths! We get hurt, get scolded, fall sick but still are able to bounce back and lead a pretty normal life. In fact evolution should have taught us to experiment more! Even dangerous experiments seem to have very little long term impact. My mom once decided to jump onto a pile of rocks from about 20 feet high compound wall when she was young... she has a scar.. yeah... that's it. I have no scars, but I also don't have an interesting tale on "how I got this scar".

Inspite of all the "cushions" we have in life, we don't stop from warning, scolding, even beating up a child that tries things out of the norm.  The reason (apart from life safety, which I think is something we rarely have to worry about) is that we want the child to get all things "right" the first time. Atleast for me, if my kid were to jump off a 20ft wall, it means that he was not able to judge if he is going to get hurt or not by jumping off that wall. So, he "got it wrong". But that's ok, I am sure my kid would have realised enough not to do that again. That's common sense. But I would still reprimand him. My main reason, sub-consciously, would be to drill into him not to extend the experiment to a 100ft wall!  Because, he cannot afford to get it wrong then.

As we grow older, we don't need someone else to reprimand us; we warn, scold, and beat up the child inside us that wants us to try things that our heart wishes for! Anything that doesn't kill you makes you stronger. But it is extremely important to know what can kill you! As adults, I will assume that we all know what will kill us literally or cause a slow painful death. Excluding such experiments and other obvious stupidities (like drugs), there still are a huge number of things that we pass without consideration. That's because as adults we build up a whole slew of mythical/artificial dangers around things. Or, even worse, we just don't care. So we complicate the equation of what we "think" will kill us by putting a lot of potentially unnecessary stuff on the "right hand side" of the equation. It is no longer life as it is, it becomes life, as we know it. Societal pressures and a hurted ego are the two most important among things that we think will "kill" us. No risks, no rewards is only half the knowledge. "No risk, no fatalities" is the other, implied, half. So, logically the safest thing to do would be to not take risks at all!  We will miss out on opportunities to alter our life in a positive way, yes, but at-least we don't run the risk of negatively impacting it in case we do not get it right! Right?

The only flaw in the above argument, I think, is that the things that we have to get "right" the first time we attempt it, is a very very small percentage of things that want to do. In fact, more you remove stuff from the right hand side of what you think will "kill" you, the less the number of things that we must get right the first time. False ego (oooh, how will I face my family in case I fail??) and societal pressures (what will my friends say in case I fail) are the biggies that we can consider from removal.  Even if we remove one of them, the percentage of things we need to get right the first time, comes down drastically.  It is not that we shouldn't care for the society or our ego, the point is that if our intentions are honest, life does allow us to bounce back, inspite of mistakes, from a vast majority of situations!