Biscuits and Gravy “Opportunities”

During the course of our lives, we all run across those moments where opportunity comes knocking on our doors.

Now, for some of us we go to take that open door only to find it abruptly slammed harshly in our faces. However as despairing as it may seem, and granted the despair does pile up, we often lose sight over what opportunities still lie ahead, sometimes even in plain sight.

True, it does take some courage and a little bit of determination to keep pushing along despite all the misgivings that life may lend, but we all do eventually, if we work hard enough, find those open doors.

I remember one early morning I had decided to take a little stroll in downtown Edmonton. Now, for most people this might a little disconcerting, but I’ve found for a Southerner we simply have a crazed reputation around ‘yankeeland,’ thats anywhere north of the Mason-Dixon line by the way.

Apparently, a friend of mine explained, having spent fifteen years in the service of the NYPD, Southerners have a reputation of being stubborn enough to fight over the lint in their pockets. I laughed then but the more I walk the streets, I find it to have a good element of truth to it, but I digress.

That early summer morning, I was walking downtown with my jacket, one of the few walking around that early, but the only one in a jacket for sure. I had walked around for something like an hour or so when I happened to chance by one of those random downtown construction sites.

There didn’t seem to be any signs of life at first, until I grew closer when a lone man came wobbling out. He looked like something that had been tossed in a haybailer about four years ago and left to sit in the summer heat… smelled something similar as well as I recall.

He looked friendly enough, and me being the down home country boy that I was slowed to look his way. He asked if he could ask a question. I obliged saying I had an answer for him. Quickly smiling he then began to tell me his story, not a question to be found.

He explained to me that he was down on his luck and couldn’t make ends meet lately. Apparently, as I soon found in his long discourse of dialogue ramblings, he had just moved into the city a few weeks ago, and was having difficulties finding a job.

Now, I noted he looked the part of a construction worker, but I shrugged it off momentarily. He said that he was from another province, where I’m not entirely sure, but somewhere in Canada for certain. Then the question came, if I could lend him some money, anything, to help him along since he couldn’t find a job anywhere.

Well, I just grinned ear to ear. Looking him straight in the eye I stepped a bit closer speaking in a very optimistic tone, “Son,” despite the fact he was older than I was, “I just moved here from another country. And if I can find a job, so can you!”

He stood there stunned and bewildered, not knowing how to respond. I simply nodded, wished him the best, and departed to continue my walk for the morning. It just went to show me that yes, we do all fall on hard times and yes tragic things do happen. However, we have to keep pushing, hold our heads high and be determined to succeed.

The opportunities that we seek are there, we just have to keep our eyes open and our hearts optimistic in order to actually know they are there. They will certainly come and go; even if it is our dream opportunity that simply doesn’t pan out, we have to understand that perhaps what we dream for will come, just in a completely different manner than what we expected.

The old adage that we make our own opportunities is somewhat true. We make them by having the courage, stamina and determination to keep trying towards those lofty goals that we constantly set for ourselves.