The biggest thing that separates someone who is in the history books from the rest of us is not just circumstance. Circumstance can only carry people so far. While we would all like to think we would be someone famous and perhaps powerful if we were given the opportunity. Reality is we are likely given the opportunity on a frequent basis. Maybe today an opportunity came up where we could find ourselves world famous if we took it. Opportunities are not scarce in our lives, neither are dreams of what we want to be.
We can go to a jewelry store almost anywhere in the world and buy a diamond, ruby, and even an emerald for a few hundred dollars. You can also buy opal, and other rare stones for very little. Pearls are a little more expensive, and they can cost quite a bit, but they are still not outrageously expensive by any measure. These are all man made stones and cultured pearls, but they are good value for the dollars spent. How else could someone afford to buy what is essentially a larger than normal stone or pearl for what amounts a few dollars on the value of the real thing?
So it is with us. We determine we want something, but we choose not to have the patience to work for it. In our childishness and selfishness we want it right now. We want it today, or tomorrow at the latest. It is the same with opportunity. Each time opportunity shows up, we either do not see it for what it is, or we do not have whatever it takes to stick with it for the duration. If we did eventually this opportunity and our life will intertwine and become one. Everyone would love to be the founder of a fortune fifty company, an oil tycoon, or a media mogul. But few of us really want to work have to for it.
Instead we live out our life thinking about we could be someday. Think about when we were children, and a friend asks us what we are going to be when we grow up? In high school we research and type a paper or two on what we want to be when we are out of high school. We researched many careers we think we want, and we pick the best and find out all we can about it. The we compile our notes into a paper and we turn it in. Then we forget about it slowly because we really do not want to work at whatever we want to become that badly.
Suddenly school is out and our dream is a little tarnished. We can not see how we are going to achieve our dream so we set on a back shelf where we can take it down and admire it once in a while. We dust it off, think about it, and then we put it back on the shelf. As the month and then years go by, other dreams and opportunities enter our lives. Unfortunately for most of us, all these golden opportunities end up on the shelf too. Mostly we choose instead of the real diamond, ruby, or pearl, one of the cheaper imitations that little value outside of our imagination where we can pretend they are the real thing.
Of course one day we wake up and realize we are getting old. We look over at the shelf and we see that over the decades we have a whole collection of ‘could have beens’ in various stages of collecting dust. I wonder what would happen now that we are older and have the time to take one of them down, dust it off, and once and for all make an honest attempt to manifiest one of our dreams from years past, or if we opened our eyes and allowed ourselves to be open to opportunity?
No comments yet.