Opportunities

It is hard to imagine how many opportunities we miss in our lives just because of our passiveness. Some of those opportunities could have made our lives more interesting, sensible and happy, helping us to reach higher peaks. What is clear for me is that the life flow is not a well-defined thing; conversely, it is quite unstable and highly detail-dependent. Though the socium stimulates an iterative and more or less steady way of life (school, high school, university, then building a career brick-by-brick...), this one is obviously not the best one. Yes, it is really not that bad, as it provides some stability and makes you confident in your future... a future of a yet another average man or woman.

The thing that comes to my mind is that the iterative way is ideal for passive persons. It just lets you drift with the flow, with minimal movements required from your side (as a side effect, this system does not accept active persons, having various insulting words such as upstarts and careerists to refer to them; Russians even have a proverb stating that “the initiative leads to punishment”).

At the same time, every day gives us a number of opportunities -- big or small, residing near or far, promising or with almost no evident output. In many cases those opportunities are hard to observe, but even being discovered, they require us to leave our cozy shell and do something unusual to catch them. Strikingly, but most of the people tend to stay in their shells even if they do see those opportunities. In some cases there is no reason to blame them, as catching opportunities may result in loss of stability of their current lifeflows (which is the core of life model propagated by the socium). However, the other opportunities are ignored for totally different reasons... For our scares, first of all. We refuse to suggest our revolutionary ideas to the director because we are afraid of his skepticism; we have to lock our manuscripts in the drawer because we do not consider them to worth a penny; we miss a chance to dance with a girl at a prom because we are afraid of being kicked off... Yes, it is completely possible that the director will tear your ideas down, the editor will send your stories back, and that blue-eyed girl will just laugh at you... But at least you will be confident that you did everything you could. Yes, the romance failed. But was it possible at all if you just have preferred to have another beer?

Being active and catching positive opportunities is vital for putting yourself above the average line.