If I was sure I’d die one year from today, I’d probably change a few things.

I’d take a few more risks, for one.

Risk isn’t easy for me. My history consists of more “I should-haves” than “You’re not gonna believe this-es”. There are no escapes from foreign prisons in stolen airplanes, no BMX backflips in front of adoring crowds, no graduation-money startups of billion-dollar tech companies.

Documented in other stories I’ve written, there have been a few activities in my life that hindsight has painted in colors a bit more risky than others, though they didn’t seem so at the time. I’ve ridden motorcycles tens of thousands of miles, ridden horses - been bucked off of my share of half-nuts examples, too - for my job for several years, personally verified the top speed of virtually every wheeled-vehicle I piloted before the age of 20…Basically, I simply wandered from experience to experience, through almost 50 years of life, as a typical, boneheaded guy. And so far, besides a few stones in a couple of internal organs (having nothing to do with any of the poor decisions I made), and a lasting scar or two (caused specifically by a few of the poor decisions I made), I’ve arrived today relatively unscathed.

But I need to admit something to you: Any risks I’ve taken have been almost entirely selfish. The risk/reward ratio was significantly tilted toward the “reward” side of the scale. In fact I was, or chose to be, largely oblivious to any real risk at all. Or at least it seemed a small price to pay for the enjoyment I got out of the action which required it. The bargain seemed like a good one, because I simply ignored the downside.

There’s a term for that. It’s called “Neutralization”. It’s where we may cognitively realize something could harm us, but we choose to ignore the darker possibilities of the task, placing them under a different light, so that we feel less guilt or fear upon undertaking it.

Of course, one could make a decent argument that there is no other compelling reason to take risks in the first place. For something to be a risk, by definition, we must chance losing something of value in exchange for the possibility of gaining something else. So if we don’t find sufficient value in a particular pursuit - value substantial enough to be worth risking for - then why pursue it at all? And don’t we all have to “neutralize” risks, to an extent, to remain sane? After all, nothing in life is risk-free. Nobody, as they say, gets out alive.

These arguments are certainly true…some of the time. But that’s where things get a bit tricky.

So far, we’ve talked only about the kind of risk where all the information required, for the most part, is known. We know what’s potentially at stake, what the chances are of us losing that stake, and what we stand to gain if we bet correctly. Riding motorcycles, for me, is fun. And I know roughly how much fun I have riding. So then the only real decision to make, is whether the risk, to me, is worth that particular amount of fun. The risks of this kind of activity can be gauged quickly and simply, using our own knowledge, and a rough sense of the probability of a given outcome.

If I walk unknowingly under a falling grand piano, have I taken a risk in the same way as the one who, watching the piano fall, runs to push me out of the way? One risk is not the same as another. Some have more gravity. Stakes which, if not higher, are more difficult to assume. More difficult because we don’t have all the information. Because the outcome affects a wider group of people. Because they require us to take the measure of something through lenses darkened by our lack of understanding. Often we see only the value of what might be lost, and remain blind to the value of what might be gained.

Statistics are known liars, which is why they find such favor with politicians, news organizations, and amateur bloggers.

Imagine, for example, that you are asked to predict which runner in an upcoming footrace has the best chance of victory. You are given no information, other than that the race will be held next Thursday, and that there are ten participants.

Whatever answer you give, of course, would be a simple guess. Statistically, everything assumed equal, each runner has a 1 in 10 chance of winning. It’s a true game of chance.

But what if you then find out the race is 100 meters long, and that world record-holder Usain Bolt is in lane three?

Now not only does it not matter who the other nine runners might be, it really doesn’t matter whether there are nine other runners, or nine thousand. There is now a much greater likelihood of predicting the winner, and we learned only the qualification of one of the participants. The facts of the race really didn’t change between the first bit of information and the second. Only our understanding did.

The example may seem both obvious and extreme. But it really isn’t. Life, and our understanding of it, functions exactly the same way. The reason the example seems so obvious, is because we now have understanding. And to gain it, we had only to know two things: That the task at hand is to run 100 meters as fast as possible, and that Usain Bolt is unusually qualified to do that.

And this is why statistics can’t explain the future. It’s why they shouldn’t be viewed as truth, or relied-upon in any more than a cursory way. Because they are based upon averages and limited understanding.

But we use them to predict our futures all the time. We use “known” statistics to assign probabilities, and then assume that what we’re risking is the loss of everything we now know.

The problem is that what we think we know, we don’t. Probability only works when talking about averages. It is an outcome predicted by mathematics applied to a faceless public. And mathematics knows nothing of the human mind. Of the heart. Of the impossibly-complex network of thought and pain and blood and thorns and talent and brilliance that is you. You alone.

The probability of your unique personality - all of your talents, loves, desires, abilities, failures, victories - being brought together under one brain and around one beating heart, out of 7.5 billion people on earth, is essentially zero.

It therefore follows that the probability of ever actually breathing to life whatever it is you are equipped to bring to the world, in the way that only a person with your specific personality and talents and loves, desires, abilities, failures and victories can, is essentially zero.

Except it isn’t. Because you are here.

The statistical impossibility of the poem being written in the words that only you can write becomes a certainty, if only you’ll write it. Because no one else can.

The astronomical odds against someone with your particular empathy and compassion and consideration bringing love to the hurting neighbor as only you can, becomes a certainty, if only you’ll love her. Because no one else can.

No one else can sing the songs, or bring the clarity to the confusion, or feel the need in an unfeeling world that only you can.

None of us are sure if we’ll die one year from today. Or whether it will be in thirty years. Or tomorrow.

But the thing we can do today, is to see clearly that the only real risk in this life has nothing to do with assessing probabilities, or predicting outcomes, or by casting the die in a game of chance.

It is failing to embrace the certainty of what you were born to do. You alone.

Because no one else can.