I’ve spent some time thinking about opportunity in the past few months. The thing about opportunities is that they require action. Chancing upon an open door does not benefit you unless you muster up the energy to walk through the doorway and act upon what you find on the other side. The other thing about opportunities is that sometimes failure to step through the doorway means that the door will close again. Occasionally what seems like a good opportunity is not as useful as it first seemed. A free couch does not benefit you if you already have a better couch.
Our problem is that we ended up with a series of amazing opportunities all within a short span of time. We have been running ourselves ragged trying to use them all. We reached the point where we realized that we simply have to pass some of them by. It is like passing by the free couch, not because we couldn’t use it, but because we simply don’t have the means to bring it home. And yet we walk away from the opportunity full of thoughts of how wonderful that couch would be if only we could carry it. We have been sorely tempted by some of these opportunities we had to turn down because we’re already overloaded. And I regret the missed chances. Regret can be very heavy indeed.
Opportunity only knocks once, or so goes the old adage. But I’ve realized that is a misleading statement. It is true that if I don’t take this free couch someone else will take it and my chance is gone. But this is not the only free couch in the world. Free couches are listed regularly on craigslist or freecycle. This missed couch does not mean that I will never have a couch. In fact I can be doing things that make acquiring a free couch highly likely and in ways that provide for the couch to be carried to my home. We can make opportunities. Howard and I have the opportunities we have now because of all the work that went before. This is part of the regret for missed chances because in my imagination I also miss all the other chances that might have resulted from this missed chance. And so I become the girl counting chickens before they hatch. The truth is that missing one opportunity is not the end of anything. I can reach out for a similar opportunity again on a different schedule. This chance is not my only chance. I have to believe that.