Today's
quotation:
Too
often, the opportunity knocks, but by the time you push back
the chain, push back the bolt, unhook the two locks and
shut off the burglar alarm, it's too late.
Rita Coolidge
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Today's
Meditation:
What kinds of opportunities have you missed this
week? Why have you missed them? Sometimes
opportunities present themselves to us, but we're unable
to take advantage of them because our current situations
keep us from jumping when they do come--if we even
recognize them.
Our decisions in life, of course, often preclude
opportunities. Once we decide to get married and
have a family, for example, we're pretty much locked into
a course that doesn't allow us to take an opportunity to
spend a year backpacking with friends in Europe.
Once I commit myself to a semester- or year-long teaching
contract, I'm not able to take an opportunity to do
another job somewhere else. This is a simple fact of
life.
But sometimes we get locked into the status quo because we
desire safety so much that we hesitate whenever
opportunity presents itself, and we're unable to take
advantage of it. We keep our doors bolted shut
because we fear disruption, we fear that our habits and
routines will be lost, and we've come not just to love
them, but to depend on them to provide us with what we see
as security. When we get locked into routines in
this way, we often lose our ability even to see and
recognize opportunities when they come our way.
Opportunities come in many forms: jobs,
relationships, hobbies, learning, creating, repairing,
even buying and/or selling. But we have to keep our
eyes open for them so that they don't pass us by when they
arrive, so that we don't miss the "windows" of
opportunity that open pretty often, but that close
themselves eventually if we don't respond to them.
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