If you don't have a voice that forces you back to basics, you're a dangerous person. Or to put it another way: You're at risk, and the people with you are at risk. I'm not a daredevil. I don't fly without a safety net.
Without in any way minimising the economic and psychological blow that people experience when they lose their jobs, the unemployed in affluent countries still have a safety net, in the form of social security payments, and usually free healthcare and free education for their children. They also have sanitation and safe drinking water.
Technology has a shadow side. It accounts for real progress in medicine, but has also hurt it in many ways, making it more impersonal, expensive and dangerous. The false belief that a safety net of sophisticated drugs and machines stretches below us, permitting risky or lazy lifestyle choices, has undermined our spirit of self-reliance.
Africa's informal economy is one of the most innovative and inventive environments in the world. Yet it is an environment with little regulation in which workers are often exposed to hard conditions and live without a safety net.
I was a wild kid. I was left to climb trees. And you know those railways logs, they piled them up, six feet apart, and I'd jump from one to the other. Without a safety net! I was an incredible tomboy.
I know what my comfort zones are. But without a back-up, I will never step out of my comfort zone. I don't go bungee jumping; I won't jump from the third floor without a safety net. I don't do such things. That's not my personality type.
There's no real road map to L.A. Everyone's journey is different. You have to persevere and be willing to put everything in it. You have to stick it out. I don't really have a safety net, but what I do is put myself in the best possible position to succeed by working hard. Also, be careful who you let into your life.
We don't want to turn the safety net into a hammock that lulls able-bodied people into complacency and dependence.
It is quite amazing how hard the subconscious works when it is made to understand that this life is not a rehearsal, there is no safety net and no assurance of any final closure. It is also quite appalling to realize how catatonic the imagination can become when we hedge our bets, opt for the safer direction at every fork in the path.
All of the sports have a safety net, but boxing is the only sport that has none. So when the fighter is through, he is through. While he was fighting his management was very excited for him, but now that he is done, that management team is moving on.