PREPARATION IS THE KEY to life. Let me use a common everyday example to illustrate the point. Recently, at a train station, a middle-aged woman was in front of me fumbling with her bag and in a panic trying to insert a $20 bill into the ticket machine. A station officer comes over to see if she can help, and she can’t. Frustrated with the station officer, she storms off to find that the machine only takes smaller bills.
I watch her leave and she is very distraught. It was too late to offer change for her money; I didn’t have the presence of mind in any case. The problem at the root of her is that she did not prepare her trip well enough. She didn’t take the time to make sure she could jump on the train without inhibition. And this is so true to life for all of us. We all end up stuck because we run out of time, which reveals that we haven’t planned effectively enough. It happens sooner or later, and more to some than to others. There is a lesson in wisdom here. Whoever prepares well, she does better in life.
Actor Denzel Washington has said, “Luck is where opportunity meets preparation.” In other words, there is no such thing as luck: we are in the right place at the right time because we have prepared for the opportunity and we were able to take advantage of it. We planned and saw ahead. Life’s opportunities wait, and they happen, and they don’t wait for anyone. When we’re ready it’s great, when we’re not we panic like the world is ending. Most of the time the only consequence is that ‘we have to catch the next train’. I’m sure you’ll agree that it’s rarely enough to panic. But we hate to be caught off guard.
I want to suggest that this idea, that of ‘opportunity meeting preparation’, is very similar to the theory of personal domain I have written about it before.
There are three stages that define both ideas.
A: There is something “we can do”. It is to prepare. It is also in terms of personal domain to accept the current reality. Both things “we can do”.
Two: There is something that “comes”. it is the opportunity. It is also in terms of personal mastery the vision of personal mastery. Both come to us; we can create the circumstances in which they arise, either by configuring other things to support the Presentation of opportunity, and also for ‘envisioning’ the idea of personal mastery at an individual, personal level.
Three: Then there is the “result”. The first idea suggests that ‘luck’ may be the result. Like when someone says you got something you wanted: “You were lucky.” is also the achievement of personal mastery. I guess in theory we never fully and ultimately “get there”, but in essence we do reach certain levels of personal mastery.
Preparation is the key to life. Shows:
The benefits of preparation are peace and well-being, that is, shalom. It gives us the opportunity for a balanced life; a life lived truly perspective.
Perspective, in turn, gives life and promotes all good virtue. It takes us to the very beginning of a wonderful spiritual journey and a reality. As the saying goes, ‘The best is yet to come’ for such a person on such a journey.
As Baden Powell and the Cub Scout movement used to say: “Get ready.”
© Steve J. Wickham, 2008. All rights reserved worldwide.