You’ve packed the flourishing greenery
Back inside this box you’ve made
A green house cube
stuffed with verdure seeking escape
Seeking opportunity to bloom again
To scatter seed
To create the future.
But you are heedless of this dream;
inside your cube tender greens are safe
From weeds.
You open up before me
a gulf of possibility
things I never considered
complications I did not foresee.
You open up before me
a black hole of opportunity
devouring expectations
creating alternative realities
of what my future might be.
.
.
(“Thanks, Des,” she says
dripping with irony.)
That was it.
You felt it, hovering,
the possibility of change.
You knew you only had to take a step
and life would never be the same.
You felt the moment filled with possibility
and stepped back urgently,
to familiar
mediocrity.
You need imagination
to grab opportunities.
You have to be open
to the unfamiliar.
You have to trust that
something new could be great
and that all learning
has worth.
You have to be willing
to be out of your comfort zone
to have faith in yourself
~alone~
that every experience
will enrich you.
You have to accept opportunities
to empower your imagination.
.
.
”
Risk for writers: “If it doesn’t kill me, it’ll make a great story!”
As teachers we wonder why our students don’t grab at the amazing opportunities that are available to them. I was just pondering this today.
We grow
to fill the space we have.
Over time, each room fills
with things that we could live without
but gather like memories.
If the deadline is far away
we stretch to fill the time,
break the project into small parts
or forget about it until the final moments
We should expand
into our opportunities
while we have time and space
to grow.
(early October)
I can’t go to conference this year.
Ahhh! Please come!
I can’t think what I’d pitch this year.
Stay with me!
Oh. I have that old thing I could share.
Come!
Okay.
(Mid-October)
Here, look at this piece.
I like it! Send me more!
Here, look at this piece.
I like it! Can I see more?
(November)
Yup. I really like it. Send it to her.
Here is the rest!
(December)
I like it! Let’s work together!
Here’s a contract!
.
and so begins the next part of the journey
and thanks to Leena because I could have missed it all!
After the Surrey International Writers Conference, while people were packing up, Michele asked writers what they were taking away from the event. I am in the video at 4:41 after ‘noted author Sam Sykes,’ who is apparently stunned at being groped by an old lady. For the record: it wasn’t me.
.
“I feel that luck is preparation meeting opportunity.”
Oprah Winfrey
On my fridge I have a magnet that says, “Luck is believing you are lucky.”
I’ve heard people say, “You make your own luck” and I guess that’s a combination of Oprah’s comment and my magnet. Make a plan, get started toward your goals and even if things don’t turn out quite as expected, at least you’re moving in the right direction to seize opportunities that come unexpectedly. One course at college you ended up in to make up a credit might end up changing your life direction. One vacation might change your career path. Being open to surprises and taking advantage of them brings us both good luck and bad luck. Our attitude determines which, not the circumstances.
Do you choose to be lucky?
.
© Shawn Bird 2010. Free use within Rotary.
Shawn L. Bird 