Monday, December 19, 2011

12/20/11—Preparing for Opportunity

Today's Draw: Our Lady of Her Pregnant Self from Illuminate! Life Journey Cards by Linda Clayton. What is it that you really want out of life? Are you hoping that it will magically materialize before you and whisk you away? Or are you taking steps toward it every day?

OK, I cheated. I had an Eight of Wands from the Cosmic Tribe all queued up for this entry when my vicious beasts started gnarling, gnashing and flailing at the front window. The foamy, slobbery whip they worked up could only signal one thing—mailman! To my delight, he was bearing three packages and a fresh notch on his belt indicating a delivery earlier in the day where he managed to sneak two letters into my mailbox without waking Beelzebub and her faithful sidekick, Kizzie. Anyway, this oracle deck was among those packages.

Oddly, however, there is a connection between Our Lady of Her Pregnant Self (OLHPS) and that Eight of Wands. OHLPS is a card about lending your life force to something new that's about to come into creation. It could be a new project, a new idea or a new way of being. When the time comes, she will give birth to what is gestating within her. Now, the Eight of Wands I had chosen was all about seizing the moment. It's about that instant where everything you've been preparing for is about to burst into reality. 

See the connection? Yes, I thought you might. 

I'll bet if you looked back on your life, you'd see where pretty much everything happened at the right moment, when all elements were in alignment to make it possible. Even if it didn't seem that way at the time. Albeit there are some things we have to admit there is a never a right time for. Like the death of a loved one. But for the most part, when you have the perspective to look back dispassionately on a situation, you can how every step led you to where you are today in perfect time. 

The Roman philosopher, Seneca, said "luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity." I love that quote because I believe we make our own luck. We prepare for something and when the opportunity presents, we strike. OHLPS and the Eight of Wands are both saying the opportunity is near or here. Are you prepared?

And by prepared, I mean are you logistically, emotionally, intellectually and otherwise prepared? Have you done the work? There are so many things we bemoan we don't have. How come Tim Tebow gets God's favor? How come Oprah gets to own her own planet? How come Tierney Sadler gets to be an extremely cool, underground cult blogger?

Reaching a goal isn't about suffering all your life doing something unrelated until you earn enough brownie points to have something different, magical and wonderful bestowed upon you. It's about putting in your time with the different, magical and wonderful thing you want so that when the opportunity comes along, you're ready. I've worked all my adult life as a writer to become a writer. I didn't spend all that time, say, working as a project coordinator and hoping one day God would make me a writer. 

So if there's something out there that you want—a job, a lifestyle, status—what have you done to prepare? Again, suffering so much that you deserve a break isn't preparation. Even people who seem to be magically handed success out of the blue, when they look back they see why they were ready. The whole "starlet discovered at a lunch counter" thing is fantasy. That was Lana Turner and many accounts classify it as Hollywood myth. But even if it's true, she wasn't wearing ratty pedal pushers, a stained t-shirt and an eye patch that day. She wasn't too shy to talk to whomever approached or too much of a beyotch to even acknowledge his presence. She was prepared for the opportunity being handed out that day. 

Putting all of this together with yesterday's entry, it seems like this week might be about some of those tough choices you have to make to have the life you want. You can't overspend your way to wealth and you can't sleepwalk your way to success. If there's something you want, carry it within you like a baby. Nurture it. Feed it. Walk along its path. And have the patience to wait until the right opportunity comes for it to burst forth into your world.

2 comments:

  1. Hi, Tierney. What a wonderful and insightful reading. I would have not seen the connection between OLHPS and 8 Wands, but of course it is perfect! I am enjoying your wonderful site. It is a privilege to have the Illuminate! card deck be a part of it. Wishing you many blessings in the new year and I look forward to reading your posts in 2012,
    Jan Seward, publisher Illuminate! Linda Clayton deck

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