Frankly Put: Where Opportunity Meets You
There is a thin line between arrogance and self-confidence but a lack of both is a hop, skip and jump from imposter syndrome. Here it lingers in the back of the mind like a persistent itch for self-worth.
Lately, that’s where the thinking’s been. It’s hard to find the boy who believed in himself so blindly. These days, there is a caution to matters that involve self. A lot of caution. Which makes me ask myself, “what for?” I wonder, what makes the steps I take so unsure? Where did the step become slightly softer? The quickest way to process it, express it so here goes.
Adulting is weird. When I say this, I am looking at it in the case of spending your entire childhood preparing for it but once it’s in your hands you lose all sense of direction and thought. The world becomes this larger battlefield with a lot more to consider than just the goal and getting to it. I think that ideally is the root of this caution. The older you get, the bigger the impact of the mistakes you make.
It is like a tree that is growing. When it is but a seedling and it falls, its impact is not felt by the earth or by the plant itself. I don’t think it bruises itself. However, give it a couple of hundred years, and let it mature into the mighty oak it is to be. Grab an axe, use it to study how much went into its growth and when you are done, brace yourself for its fall.
Realize that as it falls, it dulled your blade. As it falls, its branches dig into the earth around it and throw it about. As it falls, anything in its gravitational path is crushed. As it falls, every living creature that made a home of its body is rendered homeless. As it falls, the oxygen it had is released in one last breath and we lose one soldier against climate change. See, at some point, it stopped being just a tree.
Similarly, life is a little like that. I think with the big things there is a risk I see beyond that causes the gentle hand of restraint to hold me back just a little. It makes ideas seem a little too large to carry and opportunities too fragile to hold. There is a scarcity mentality built up and it tears at the ravenous drive of ambition bit by bit.
They often say that when one door closes, another opens. What happens when you are left standing in the hallway, as all the doors around you swing shut? Pride and ego are the only things between you and opening doors that are closed to you. Is one only destined to depend on self-confidence to knock before any other door is opened? I suppose that is what a transition period is.
Why does this feel like a transition period? It is as if it snuck up behind me and slowly wound itself around my leg, cutting off my blood supply until the only way forward is to amputate it. It’s been such a long period of feeling like I am running in the same place and it’s just sobering to look down and realise not only have I been in the same spot but I should have jumped because now look; you’ve lost a leg.
It’s hard, to look back at the possible opportunity and think “That is gone, pack up and move forward.” Still I question when it became hard because that was not something that was even a second thought. Have these opportunities begun to feel like I am boxing myself in? Like with every chance I grab, I reduce the options I have on the table ahead of me.
What is enjoyable about having many choices on the table anyway? Choice paralysis is stressful and with it comes the fear of the wrong choice after casting others aside once a choice is made. Still, doesn’t it seem like narrow-mindedness to only see life as this seemingly straight line?
I realise this time I am posing more questions than giving answers and opinions but I think it’s still an expression of that thought. Opportunity is hard to come by when it is what you are searching for. Closed mouths don’t get fed, the saying goes. In essence, an opportunity is still useless to you when it meets you and you lack the capacity to take it.
Sitting here, I am in a period where it seems suspicious when things line themselves up so perfectly. I’m constantly looking over the shoulder of the chance to see if there is some negative kickback to it. Though, when I actually reflect on such situations, it is essentially the synthesis of all the work I put in. It is the wishes and prayers sent by a younger me that are now manifesting.
It is meeting people who just feel right within your space and realising that it is because you worked so hard on raising your standards, setting your boundaries, underlining your value systems and letting them run the show. It is work opportunities coming in to meet your ambition and mission and realising it is because of your drive, persistence, your honing of your skills and your putting yourself out there that brought you here.
Every day, I strive to be ready, I try to create an environment where everything I want finds a space to plant roots and grow. Like a farmer, ploughing the land, I am not sure when the rains will come again nor am I sure that the market will buy my produce but I still wake up to plough the land and ready the soil.
If an opportunity is a bus, maybe you should be at the bus stop or better yet, buy your ticket beforehand, leave the house in good time, enjoy your stroll to the bus stop and when you get there, sit and watch the traffic well before your bus gets here.
Be there, where opportunity meets you, to put it Frankly.
