Life :: Missed Opportunities

Last updated on 13 April 2016

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In mid January I was away for a week. You probably didn’t notice, because things around here on the blog were pretty normal. If you follow along on Instagram or Twitter you may have noticed that I was at a conference called New Wine. New Wine is a Christian camp that happens every year here in New Zealand (and other places around the globe), and it goes from the Thursday evening until Monday lunch time. You can read more about it here on the website, but in short, it’s a week of sessions where there’s a main speaker, some awesome music, and general fun and fellowship with people.

While I had a great time at camp, and there were so many great, inspiring, thought-provoking speakers and sessions, it was in one of the casual afternoon slots where something really got my attention. A New Zealander called Mic Duncan was in with the Living Room (the 18-30 year olds…myself included), and it was just an informal Q&A type hour or so. But one of the things he got around to talking about was regrets. Apparently there was a big survey done, and the biggest regret that people in that age-bracket (18-30) had was not things like ‘not standing up for ourselves’ or ‘not studying enough at University’ and not even ‘not getting out of New Zealand’…the biggest regret that people in my generation had was missed opportunities.

Missed opportunities.

That was the biggest regret. And you may be thinking ‘okay…so what?’ or ‘there are worse regrets than that!’, and it’s true, there probably are. But missed opportunities?! To me there’s nothing worse than looking back on your life and regretting not taking hold of the things that come your way. It could be big things, it could be little things. It’s the little things, after all, that make the big things what they are. It’s like someone passed around the chocolate cake and it just went on by you. You didn’t reach out and grab a slice. Looking back on that party, sure it was a great celebration, but in the back of your mind you’ll be thinking about that bit of chocolate cake that you never experienced.

I think it made a lot of sense, after the initial ‘really!?’ moment, when Mic said this. I would have thought it would be something like ‘not believing in ourselves’ or ‘caring too much about what other people think’ that would have made it to number one. Not missed opportunities. And I think that that’s actually quite sad.

I guess what I’m trying to say as I waffle on and on, is make sure you grab every single opportunity that life throws out you, even if it’s something so small you think it doesn’t matter. If you find you grab hold of an opportunities that swings by you, and it doesn’t turn out okay…that’s totally fine! Look out for the next one, and grab hold. The opportunities aren’t necessarily going to be good ones, but they are going to be ones you’ll remember, ones that you will be glad that you seized, ones that you can learn and grow from.

Don’t be a part of that group. Don’t be one to get to 30, only to look back on your short life and realise you missed opportunities. I know that Carpe Diem is a cliché, and that seizing the day doesn’t work for everyone…but at least seize something, friends. Let’s not be that generation. Let’s be the generation who took those lemons that life threw at us and made something entirely different. Let’s be the generation who ran into those opportunities head first, hearts pumping, ready for whatever came our way.

Let’s be opportunity seizers.