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 stood in front of me fumbling for her purse and in a panic trying to stuff a $20 bill into the ticket machine. An officer from the station comes over to see if she can help, and she can’t. Frustrated with the station officer, she storms off to discover that the machine only takes smaller bills.
I watch her as she leaves and she is very distressed. It was too late to offer him 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 didn’t prepare her trip well enough. She didn’t take the time to make sure she could get on the train without inhibitions. 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 have not planned well enough. It happens sooner or later, and more to some than to others. There is a wisdom lesson 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. The opportunities of life wait, and they happen, and they wait for no one. When we are prepared it is great, when we are not we panic as if 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 being 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 previously.
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 mastery to accept the current reality. Both things “we can do”.
Two: There is something that “comes”. is the opportunity It is also in terms of personal mastery the vision of personal mastery. They both come to us; we can create the circumstances in which they arise, either by configuring other things to support the Presentation of the opportunity, and also for ‘viewing’ the idea of personal domain 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 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 truly lived perspective.
Perspective, in turn, enlivens and promotes all good virtue. It takes us to the very beginning of a wonderful spiritual journey and 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.
