August 29

  

Today's Quotation:

We are always surrounded by doors of opportunity.  That’s the way life is.
Often, opportunities do not come in packages wrapped in the colors
we expected.  When an unexpected surprise happens, we refuse to see it
and so we miss the opportunity.  Sometimes we are so focused on a goal
far out in the future that we do not see what is right in front of us, or we get
so busy hurrying and rushing around that we lose all perspective.

Anne Wilson Schaef

Today's Meditation:

Possibility and potential--this day and every day are full of both of them.  The number of opportunities that we have in our lives is amazing, yet most of us rarely see even a small percentage of the opportunities that life throws our way.  There are of course the obvious opportunities such as having the air to breathe and the food to eat to keep us alive (though not everyone on the planet has the same level of opportunity there!), but there are many other opportunities that are just so unexpected that we never even see them.  They come our way only to be ignored like a twenty-dollar bill laying under a leaf.  It's there, but the leaf blocks our vision so that we don't see it and can't take advantage of it.

Our opportunities lie in many different places that we don't expect them to lie in.  Because we don't expect to see them, we simply don't see them.  If we're so caught up in what we're doing and in how we think things should be going, it can be very easy for us to miss the things that are new and different.

I find that sometimes I can be so focused on what I'm doing that I miss tons of things, and that makes me sad.  Of course, being focused allows me to complete things that need to be done, and to do them well, but sometimes I do wonder at the cost.  It's a trade-off that I need to be aware of, of course.  But Anne's right, I think--we are always surrounded by opportunity, and it doesn't always come knocking in a form that we can recognize simply.  For our opportunities and possibilities in life, we have to be ready for them when they arise, and we have to be willing to take the risks involved when they make themselves a part of our lives.

Questions to ponder:

1.  How many opportunities have you had so far today?  This week?

2.  What kinds of opportunities have you missed because you either didn't notice or misread the situation that presented itself to you?

3.  How can we learn how to recognize opportunities more readily?

For further thought:

It is very dangerous to go into eternity with possibilities
which one has oneself prevented from becoming realities.
A possibility is a hint from God.  One must follow it.

Soren Kierkegaard

   
  
 

 

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