There is always opportunity to do new things.
I heard someone reflect once that they’re always learning new things. Other people have described some of these people as always needing to learn new things.
For me, the opportunity to do new things and the need to do so are not exactly the same thing. The latter often seems to come from a kind of drivenness. The former, comes from something more like curiosity.
Few things move me towards a sullen resignation or depression more than drivenness. Drivenness (again for me) leads to resentment. I don’t feel free under the clasp of drivenness. Opportunity, on the other hand, feels more free because it is like a beckoning. It’s like something is calling and offering an invitation. I have the freedom to decline or accept the invitation. Something about the posture of invitation allows for self-regulation and choice.
Needing opportunity stymies something in me. An invitation feels more like “Come if you want to, but you don’t have to.” I find this context for opportunity to make a lot of difference for me. I don’t have to do something. I get to do something…again, if I want to.
This can put me in a slightly different kind of bind, because it forces me to acknowledge (and address) what I want. Obligation is dismissive of what I want. It doesn’t care. Perhaps, this is why I am drawn to opportunity in one context and not in the other.
All of this can happen on the smallest and simplest of levels.
If I have to mow the grass, I invariably head towards the notion of “damn it, here’s just one more thing I have to do”. It leads me to feeling like a victim. But, if I say, I get to mow the grass, I get dropped off at the door of something closer to “so, how do I want to do it? Do I want make straight lines today? Do I want to use angles? Or, do I want to put a funky curve in the pattern? If I get to mow the grass, I get to ask how do I want to mow it? If I have to mow the grass, I fall towards a sullenness because of all the things that something is making me do.
At a more sublime level, when facing something that feels new or hard (or both), framing the question as something that I get to do provides me with more agency to ask how do I want to do that thing. Again, freedom.
In a relational context, obligation leads me towards thinking that this is just one more thing that I have to get right or figure out so that you won’t be upset with me. In the other frame, I am free to explore why you, as another person, feel the way you do. You may say that your problem is with me. And, that may be true. Or, it may not be (me) and that would be something you need to discover. I get to listen to you enables the opportunity to find out which it is. Doing it from the point of view of obligation makes me not want to find out (even if it turns out that I’m not the problem).
Many times this distinction seems to pivot on my interest in and perception of the potential outcome. More often than we would like to admit, we seem to let the potential outcome dictate to our interest in proceeding. This is pretty normal, actually. But, it can also be insidious. It can change our view of the smallest of things, not to mention the largest of things. It’s not bad to consider potential outcomes. But, managing for them often is, especially in the context of opportunities. On the one hand, this is one more thing I have to do. On the other hand, this is one more thing I get to do. One has freedom and agency aimed in an open-ended direction. The other does not; it shuts down those things.
Often, in writing, it is easier (than in other modes of communication) to go back to the beginning and confirm whether or not where you started is supported by where you headed. So, in this case, I return to my opening line.
There is always opportunity to do new things.
It seems strikingly non-committal, especially in light of where it ended up. That may not be a bad thing. I wasn’t sure, initially, how much I liked the thought. Having parsed it a bit, I feel some affection for where such an unfreighted statement could lead.
I think now I have a little more to work with as I face the opportunities in my life.
