Life itself is an opportunity. A baby learns to turn over, sit up, crawl and walk in that order. A natural process built into genes as in all mammals. Babies communicate by instinct: cooing, laughing and crying and soon emerge from the confines of the nursery where each day becomes a new learning experience. Exploration!
Once in school other factors take over. Reading and writing, making friends, meeting people other than his parents, each bringing a child opportunity for personal development. As the child grows into young adulthood, opportunities abound. Legal adulthood begins at age eighteen with it’s the right to vote, or to go to war. To go to or not to go to college may be the next challenge. Money can likely be a problem, or rather the lack of it might be, but there is still the opportunity to work and to take out a student loan.
Then we look at the computer whiz kids, the geniuses of the present generation. Many of them had a vision and went for it. Some either dropped out of school or didn’t go at all but went straight to the internet with their ideas and hard work to become millionaires and more, before the age of thirty-five. They are not easily recognizable for many wear blue jeans and sneakers to work, drive old cars, and often work twenty-four hours a day and sleep in their offices. Success comes in many different packages. They seized the opportunity and ran with it. Luck plays into the equation, but hard work and good clear minds, plus a belief in themselves helped make them successful. Whether or not to choose the best apparent opportunity for a successful life, is anybody’s uneducated guess, especially for the young and inexperienced who might have a hard time understanding why they, too, must start at the bottom of the stack (i.e. copy boy instead of investigative reporter) for their best opportunity to learn and advance their careers. Some choose to take the best paying job which they may end up hating instead taking a lesser paying, but more interesting job. Does money determine satisfaction? With the abundance of jobs available today one doesn’t have to take the best, or the worst job offered, so the opportunity of choice presents itself once again. Some people are altruistic and become our teachers or social workers. Their lives are dedicated to others. They certainly don’t do it for the money. The joy of helping others succeed is their reward. Non-profit agencies offer a host of interesting jobs, most of which are interesting and fulfilling, but not wealth-making for the average worker. What a shame our culture does not reward service professionals their worth in our society. Then we would all win!
And so it goes and has gone since Adam and Eve, when Eve chose the apple, and Pandora opened the fateful Box. Often things happen which are beyond our control and change the direction we hope to travel in our lives, and opportunities are lost. We may become self-pitying and say, “But, I never had the opportunity…to get an education, to learn music to paint, or to get the right job.” And we become lost in our misery and disappointment. Our epitaphs might read “One who died searching instead of doing.” Success comes more easily to some. But what is success? Is it equated with money? I believe a truly successful person is one who loves his job more than money. He explores outside his work for seeking new experiences and horizons and doesn’t live for his job alone. People seem to be exploring life these days and are seeking new adventures, new horizons, some of which often become new careers to turn at retirement. People are no longer married to their jobs and statistics show that, among people in the work force today, apart from being disloyal, will likely have three career changes in their lifetime. Many return to studies in order to change their careers. It’s a new world. One to be applauded. The days of gold watches and employer loyalty for an entire career is a thing of the past. No more thirty-year pins! What has brought this about? Opportunities!
I had the opportunity to sit at my computer this month and write a perfectly good story which I could be reading to you tonight, but I never had the opportunity to write it because (take your choice): I was reading a good book; I wanted to read the Sunday paper; I am still doing my Christmas cards. In my mind I have a good story, but I haven’t had time to write it yet. There’s shopping to do, you know. I had to fix supper and clean up the kitchen. I was too tired to turn on the computer. We had company. I have writers’ block. I never had the chance to go to the University of Missouri School of Journalism where I might have learned to write. I have too many bills to pay. I’m too old to write. Everybody else in this group is a better writer than I am. Oh, yes, I misplaced my glasses again.
The End.