Risk Taking

I heard someone say something yesterday that stuck in my head.  “The greatest risk in life is to not take a risk.”  I feel I sorta know where they are coming from.  It seems the aspiration of the age is a life of ease.  To put in the hard yards and to relax.
To me part of that goal is good.  Putting in the hard yards and saving up for a rainy day.  Yet I do have to question if a person will be content to put their feet up after having worked hard all their lives.
The question really is “should they?”  Mum’s dad passed away soon after retiring.  He had worked hard all his life and felt he had nothing to look forward to, and saw only a future built on the absence of risks.  My dad on the other hand lived to a ripe old age.  His was a story of a man from humble beginnings making good.  Born the son of a railroad worker he ended up managing a timber company.  I often see success as being head hunted.  Others saw what he was doing and wanted him.  When he retired, he had all sorts of things he wanted to do.  I remember him telling me he thought he would learn the piano at 90.  We would often go to his place for dinner, and he took great delight in cooking up something we very much enjoyed.
I guess it is like the lady who gave me an incredible stamp collection said.  “Hold them loosely.”  I do not know what the future holds.  I could do all I can to prosper and build bigger and bigger set ups to accommodate what I accumulate, only to cark it myself (what do they say, death and taxes are unavoidable) or have something else happen I have no control of.  Something can happen that renders what I have worthless for me.
I do not know.  It seems to me that while such goals are worth pursuing, they need to be put in the context of it could all come undone.  What is plan b?  Plan b to me needs to be more than being bitter and twisted or trying to manipulate something that is beyond my power of manipulation.
Plan b is still a plan.  The engine room of plan a.  The driving power of plan a.
I have found in my life risk taking is worth it.  That does not mean I have always welcome and immediately embrace what stretches me.  Sometimes I would rather put my feet up and sometimes I need to put my feet up.  Not permanently but as a pit stop as it were.    
Life is all work and no play.  That to me is the easiest way to burn out.  It has to be a balance of work and play.  But to me growing is a lifelong thing.