Recognise every opportunity

Opportunities for success and happiness are always elusive for a vast majority of us. We lack the required connections, good luck is never on our side, the right chances pass us and more often than not, the world conspires our downfall; or so, we believe failing to recognise and make good use of the opportunities that come our way. We are all like the man who read about the secret of the ‘Touchstone,’ the story of which goes thus:

The touchstone was a small pebble that could turn any common metal into pure gold. Though it was lying among thousands of other pebbles that looked exactly like it, it felt warm, while ordinary pebbles felt cold. So, the man in search of the touchstone camped on the sea shore and began testing pebbles.

He knew that if he picked up ordinary pebbles and threw them down again because they were cold, he might pick up the same pebble hundreds of times. So, when he felt one that was cold, he threw it into the sea. He spent a whole day doing this but none of them was the touchstone. Yet, he went on and on this way - pick up a pebble and feel it quickly. As it felt cold, throw it into the sea. Pick up another, feel the surface for its temperature and throw it into the sea.

The days stretched into weeks and weeks into months. And he persisted from morning to night. One day however, about mid-afternoon, he picked up a pebble and it was warm, the very same pebble he has been looking for all the while. But, before he realised what he was doing, out of sheer repetition, he threw it quickly into the sea. He had formed such a dogged pattern of throwing each pebble into the sea that when the one he wanted came along, he still threw it away.

We form such a dogged pattern of looking for failures that when opportunities do come our way, we fail to recognise them and let them slip through our fingers. Thomas Edison, said it well when he wrote, “Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work.”