You find many people who will disagree that some opportunities only come around once. This is beautifully illustrated through the words of William Shakespeare in Julius Cesar, that “there is a tide in the affairs of men, which taken at the flood, leads on to fortune. Omitted, all the voyage of their life is bound in shallows and in miseries”.
When you find your tide, you need to take it at the flood and follow it to outrageous fortune, but if you do not, the rest of your voyage needs not be bound in shallows and permitted with misery. That’s terribly erroneous and misleading. It is certainly true, but terribly misleading. Many people fall into the trap of looking back and accounting for all the things they should have done, could have done, and which they now regret.
But just because that is what most people do, doesn’t mean that is what all people do, and that leaves your life open to tremendous possibilities.
Who ever said that things come once in a life time? Why did we come to believe that there is only one flood? There is only one perfect storm? One person who will love us unconditionally and forever? Why did we so easily accept this untruth and have organized our lives around it?
Some things come once in a lifetime, there but there many things that come. There are thousands and hundreds of thousands of things that you can choose to be and explore in your life timer. One dead end road simply means that it is time to travel down the next one. It doesn’t mean to pitch a tent, somewhere close to the sign, and commiserate, how everything has been just such a waste of time.
The fact is, you have an imaginable number of opportunities, to become and do an imaginable number of things. Yes, you need to take the tide at the flood and you might be lucky and fortune. But if you miss the wave, there will be another one. Not the same. No. Never the same, but no less rewarding or worth taking, and that is our problem. We see ourselves as failures. We regret one wave and ignore the ones that relentlessly strike against our life, over and over again.
It takes a lot of work to be regretful. It takes a lot of effort to think your life has not been worth the effort and that you could have done more. But while you are expanding all this effort wallowing and crying yourself in shallows and miseries, you should really stand up, pick up your mat, and head out to a life of new possibilities.
There is no reason not to. There are once in a lifetime opportunities, but there is an infinite amount of these once in a lifetime opportunities. If this person doesn’t want to date you, you are not for them, try someone else. If someone didn’t like your song, sing it to someone else, and write another one. If you don’t feel quite right at the job you found, do what you have to do to find another one.
The only things that is once in a lifetime is you.
You.
You are the secret ingredient to this ancient recipe.
Now, go out, and look for your tide. Any tide, and ride that sucker to outrageous fortune.
Cover photo generously provided by photographer Sebastian Leon Prado via unsplash.com
