Opportunity Knocks, and Knocks

“The one thing that all of us have in common is that everyone wants to be happy.”

– David Steindl-Rast

Opportunity Knocks, and Knocks

Andrew Solomon told me that when he was in Rwanda working on a genocide recovery project one of the local leaders said, “We’ve had a lot of trouble with Western Mental Health Workers.”

Andrew was surprised and said, “Oh! What kind of trouble did you have?”

The Rwandan Project Leader replied, “Well, they would do this bizarre thing.  They didn’t take people out into the sunshine where you begin to feel better.  They didn’t include drumming or music to get people’s blood going.  They didn’t involve the whole community.  They didn’t externalize the depression as an invasive spirit.  Instead, what they did was, they took people, one at a time, into dingy little rooms and have them talk for an hour about bad things that had happened to them. We had to ask them to leave the country!”

David Steindl-Rast also just left Africa.  But, he didn’t leave because he was asked to go.  He felt that even though he had gone to Africa to be a teacher, he had learned a critical truth there that he wanted to share with the rest of the world.

David looked out at me and said, “The one thing that all of us have in common is that everyone wants to be happy.  We all know people that have everything they need to be happy, yet they are not happy. We also know people who have lots of misfortune, but they are happy.  So, it is not happiness that makes us happy.  It is gratefulness that makes us happy.”

He went on to explain that true gratitude has to come from something of valuable.  It has to be a real gift.  It has to be freely given.  This is how gratefulness comes to us.  You haven’t earned it; you haven’t brought it about in any way.  “The most valuable gift we all have is the present moment.”

It is most valuable because you have no way of assuring there will be another moment given to you.  And yet, each moment is the most valuable gift that can ever be given to any of us. 

David taught me that each individual moment contains opportunity and that if I didn’t have this present moment I wouldn’t have any opportunity to do anything or experience anything.  Each moment is a gift moment.

There’s an old saying, “Opportunity knocks only once.” 

David showed me that this saying isn’t true at all.  He caused me think about opportunity from a new perspective; every moment is a new gift.  New moments occur over and over again.  If you miss the opportunity of this moment another moment is given; and another; and another.  It’s a new view of gratitude I never considered before.

“We can avail ourselves of this opportunity or we can miss it. And if we avail ourselves of the opportunity it is the key to happiness.  We possess the key to our happiness in our own hands.”  He taught me.

I thought more deeply about my own life experience while David was speaking.  I’ve been rushing through life and the rushing makes it so I never see most of the offered opportunity.  The richness of life comes from the abundance of opportunity.  So, what can we all do to increase the richness of our lives?

David says, “Stop, look, go.”

How often do you stop?  Are you rushing through your life as well?  If so, make sure you take time to get quiet.  Build stop signs into your life.  You can find your own stop signs.  Just leave it up to your imagination.

Look.  Open your eyes and open all your senses to the wonderful richness that is all around us.  That’s what life is all about; enjoy all that’s been given to you.  When you open your heart to the opportunities, your heart will invite you to do something.

That’s the third thing – go and really do something.  Do whatever life offers you at any given moment.  David says, “Mostly it is the opportunity to enjoy.”

Stop, look, go, is such a potent seed.  Try it and you’ll be surprised at the wave of gratefulness that will appear all around you.  It will change your world.  Gratitude changes everything about life.  It will make you happy.