Life on the Edge

I was out on the southern cliff top recently checking on the trees planted there when I saw a spider’s web stretched between several bamboo stakes. How the spider ever got to the top of each stake to pull tight a single strand of web to make things all taut and ready to catch flies, is hard to fathom. A bit of imaginative engineering skill, for sure.

I had also been out on the western cliff top checking out the lone surfer who waited and waited for his perfect wave to come in.

All the while, I had been reflecting on the cruise ship that came past these same cliffs last week (written up in the previous blog) and I had been tossing around in my head the phrase: “When my ship comes in”. 

Seeing the spider and surfer made two things apparent. One, is that a bit of skill and work is first necessary so that when one’s ship does come in (or the fly or towering wave) things are in place and skills honed to handle and take full advantage of the situation. How many people are caught with their pants down, so to speak, when opportunity comes calling? They just aren’t skilled enough. They haven’t prepared. They haven’t done the necessary hard slog.

The other vital component necessary is patience. No one will ever know when their ship will come sailing by. Maybe today, maybe next year, maybe in ten years time. But it will. If we give up out of lack of patience, turn our back on the hope of anything good coming our way, then sure as anything, this is when opportunity will come knocking. But then, we won’t be there. We’ll have left.

Experience has taught me over the years that everyone has had good fortune smile down on them in one fashion or another. Whether any of us have been prepared enough and waited patiently long enough to capitalise on this good fortune, well, that’s either the lucky or the unlucky part of the story of our lives.