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The Chinese fortune writers are certainly playing the odds these days:

”A resort area will be part of your next holiday plans.”

Not particularly enlightening, and only slightly prophetic. Did the Peking Noodle Company boss come down on the creative staff for too many incorrect predictions? God damn it, Harold, we’ve had six complaints today that no one in the last month has found true love, and absolutely no one registered lucky number confirmations! Or perhaps it’s a distribution issue – the fortune cookie elves swapped the San Diego and New York shipments?

Either way, they’re certainly hedging their bets.

Typical of my digressions, I started analyzing the propriety of “hedging bets” across spectrums – certainly, I’m of the financially conservative ilk that prefers to have a diverse portfolio, hedging against catastrophic losses. And at work, I suppose, I periodically do the same – pad hours on a project schedule predictions to take into account the inevitable engineering details only realized after digging about in code all day. But in terms of life outside the mundane, where is it appropriate?

I never hedge my bets with women; I don’t date a girl on the side, just in case the one I’m currently with doesn’t work out. I don’t (intentionally) double-book weekends so I have an excuse to leave the first event if I feel the desire. I don’t schedule Thanksgiving at both my mother’s and father’s in case one of them decides to have it at their significant other’s. I don’t train at two martial arts schools, in case one doesn’t have what I’m looking for. When I travel, I have a copy of my passport.

Hedging has this negative connotation, a lack of commitment, and I’m going to buy into that. Am I alright with hedging aspects of my life because I deem them “not as important”? Or are there times when hedging is a Good Thing? Or are there details I’m missing?

As always, yes, yes, yes. There are things that are not as important, and you should only commit yourself to things that are. And there are times when hedging can be beneficial – in terms of martial arts, it’s difficult to attack someone that has not yet committed to this movement or that. (This brings up an entire digression regarding a martial artist’s commitment to adaptability, or strategy, as opposed to a particular technique, but that’s only partially germane to the point of this post.) And of course, yes Virginia, there are details I’m missing.

Let’s draw a distinction between “hedging” and “planning.” Having a contingency plan is antipodal to hedging, as there exists a strict hierarchy or flow of conditions: first this, and if not that, then this, etc. Concretely, it is what Michael Brown lacked in the aftermath of Katrina. A contingency plan is actually a total commitment to a defined process, an acknowledgment of the volatility of variables and a method for dealing with the probability distribution. Hedging is simply a lack of responsibility. In this, light, I don’t know if I ever intentionally hedge, even in the above examples. I’ve merely developed an exigent strategy for change.

In a nutshell, I sound extremely boring.

Where does my excitement come from? Spontaneous cavorting? Improper nudity? Do I ever let loose? Of course, but it’s less of an internal drive (although I definitely have my moments), and more of situational awareness. I know what will spur me to toss the contingency plan out the window at the last minute and drive to Mammoth to ski for the weekend. I know when I’m bogging myself down in a world full of computer geeks, or literati, or other such nonsense. I make the conscious decision to throw caution to the wind, well aware of when I’ll have to reap the consequences. At those times, I call my friends, the ones that will pull me away from some overly-intellectual lethargy (or push me back in it, whichever the case may be) and encourage me to get a little demented. I may not want to go downtown and gets ridiculously tipsy, but I know when it’s good for me, and who to do it with.

I know where my resources are. Those that support me, those that I can’t live without. And hopefully, they know where I am when they need that which they lack.

Then again, I’m more of a backpack-and-crash-somewhere sort of guy, not really a resort-vacation sort of guy, so perhaps I should regard this as a harbinger of some sort of inverse gallavanting.