Opportunities

Look around your world. A few times. Not just once or twice. That’s barely a beginning. Look at yourself in the mirror. At the bed you sleep on, the chairs where you sit, the table where you eat. Whether you are in a house or apartment, a prison cell or a tent, look around you. Look at the world you inhabit and where you are in that world.

Like most people, I have lived in houses. Also apartments. I’ve been in tents, uncomfortable as they are, and prisons and jails. My father used to visit our county sheriff every month or so when I was a boy. He took me along. After visiting the sheriff, he invariably went back to visit whoever he might know in the cells. I went back to the cells with him.

Look at yourself in the mirror again.

Does your skin feel like a comfortable home to you?

Or do you feel imprisoned, confined within yourself?

We grow up hearing from parents, teachers and other adults about all the opportunities we have as children and will have as adults. Things they never imagined for themselves. As we become teenagers and young adults we gradually begin to hear all of the things we cannot do. They don’t fit somebody else’s idea of who we are or what we ought to do with our lives. The opportunities we were told we have become less of a possibility.

What we’re not told and frequently don’t realize we can tell ourselves is that there are other, unknown opportunities waiting for us. Sometimes we catch on to some of them early on. Regardless of anything we…