Opportunity knocks, Dream, Act: Why Your Best Years Are Still Ahead

IOver the ncext few posts I will be looking at opportounity, I hope you enjoy where my thoughts take me.

Let me ask you something. When was the last time you knocked on a door you were not sure would open?

If you are like many seniors, it has been a while. We get comfortable. We get cautious. We decide that the days of knocking on unfamiliar doors are behind us. Better to stay where it is safe. Better not to risk the disappointment of a door that stays shut.

But here is what I have learned after nearly eighty years. Every breakthrough, every invention, every masterpiece that profoundly changed lives started with just a little new thinking by one person. Just one. Someone who decided to knock.

And you are good at this. You have done it before. You just forgot.

Knock and It will be opened. You know the phrase. It is old. It is simple. And it is stubbornly, annoyingly true.

Doors do not open themselves. They wait. They are patient. They have all the time in the world. And they will stay closed forever unless someone raises a hand and knocks.

That job application you are afraid to submit. That class you are afraid to sign up for. That phone call you are afraid to make. That apology you are afraid to offer. Knock. Just knock. You have no idea what is on the other side, but you know for certain what is on this side. The same view you have been staring at for months. Or years.

Knock. The worst that happens is nothing. The best that happens is everything.

Knock on wood

When I was young, I was told opportunity only knocks once, I learned through life that this is not true. 

Opportunity keeps knocking, the problem is that we don't hear it, or when we do, we open the wrong door, and go off in the wrong direction, and maybe we fail. 

However, it won't matter that 10,000 doors might be slammed in your face, because when door number 10,001 flies open, revealing pathways of jade and gardens of love, with flowers dancing, fountains sparkling, friends blushing, moonbeams glowing, and abundance abounding, you'll completely forget about all the other doors. 

Happens every day, so take the challenge and open the next door!

For the Boomers

Who will stand up
for
the dreamers,
the poor
the music unsung

These frail words
stand in the context of
LOVE
piercing through the
Frail curtain of humanity's weight.

Illusory shadows of live have
hidden our soul
and we need to
stop our insane dance of consumption

and act and fight
under starry, starry skies and star-lit candles
Will we again stand up
for the Dreamers

the eccentric wheelers
for silences unsaid
for the words unheard


Those were the days by Mary Hopkins reminded me that me that we are older but no wiser and perhaps that is a good thing as we may have yet time to fulfill not the opportunities of youth, but the promises we mad to ourselves in our youth. At one point in my life I believed that we all had the same ability to  grasp the opportunities that came along, I did not realize that was not true. Opportunities are always there, but because of many factors in our life build a way of seeing the world that does not allow some of us to see these opportunities, or does not allow us to act on the opportunities that come along. Those of us who were lucky seized some opportunities and ignored others; either way we continued to live our life's and engage with the world. However when we were young we made promises to ourselves, and my hope is that as we get older, we remember and act on the promises. I saw, many years ago, on a graffiti wall this message: "I wish I could be the hero/heroine, I thought I would be when I was 10" In our 60's maybe we have the chance to be that hero/heroine once more