If you don’t take risks you never drink champagne.
Russian Proverb
Trust the Russians to proverbially excuse and encourage daredevil behaviour for the promise of alcohol afterwards. Davai!
I kid, Russians are wiser than that (some of them, anyhow).
Tell me, when does champagne taste best?
After a day sat solitary, half-drunk, half-sunk into your sofa?
Or after a day spent taking risks, making opportunities, earning and burning, trying and striving, after which you collapse onto your sofa?
Bubbly is applied to bubbly occasions: wedding, winning, celebrating.
Why is wedding and winning worth celebrating? They are successfully taken risks!
Wedding, risking your life’s fare on one fair man or maiden.
Winning, successfully risking loss for the opportunity to win. After careening around corners with several atmospheres of pressure concaving their ribcage, Formula 1 drivers pop and spray champagne for darn good reason.
After my most tumultuous boxing bout, during which I dislocated my right shoulder in round two of three, I drank in celebration. But I didn’t—couldn’t—get drunk. All champagne is after a successfully taken risk like that, all champagne should be generally, is a crowning metaphorical expression of a risk successfully taken.
Drinking to get drunk is a debased kind of risk taking, chugging champagne in expectation of that better bubbly feeling which only successfully taken risks can give you.
So spare a thought for the spoiled, born with silver spoons in their mouths and champagne at the breakfast table. Spare a thought for the old soak spinning a yarn of risks that coulda shoulda woulda been taken. Spare a thought for those who dare not take a risk. For how are they ever to earn or savour champagne?
The fear and experience of failure, of destitution, of death is part of life; naturally bound to the enjoyment and experience of success, of abundance, of life.
Take risks, reap rewards, and savour your champagne!
The Works and Chirps of a Guernseyman 