There are many times in my life that I was given a great opportunity but turned it down in order to protect something else, whether it be a friendship, money, time, or something else, but it never really gave me long term regret. However a friend of mine has had an experience where he turned down a great opportunity that ended up being an even bigger opportunity when all was said and done.
I had a friend in high school that ended up moving but we kept in touch. He moved somewhere in New York and was attending a huge high school that is very well known in the New York area but I can not remember the name of it. He's a huge theater geek and always did plays and everything for as long as I can remember. When he first got there high school he did a couple plays and theater productions and ended up getting a pretty good reputation. I remember one day he was telling me that the lead role in their big Spring production, which I think was Our Town, was having a lot of trouble and was way behind schedule in learning all his lines and the other things people do in plays. Couple days later he tells me he was offered to take over the role because the teacher was nervous the other kid wasn't going to be able to figure it out in time. Since my friend was new he did not want to make anyone mad so he ultimately turned it down. Couple weeks after the play is over and they are all done he learns that the kid who played the lead was contacted by some big acting school in New York saying that their scout or something happened to be at one of the showings and wanted to do an interview for admission into the school. There's obviously no guarantee that he would have given a good enough performance to get the same offer, but now that kid is in that acting school and my buddy is going to school in New Jersey. We have not really talked about it that much but I can tell he regrets not taking that opportunity.
This is a good example of the idea that "Good things happen to those who wait" because I am sure that, since this was not his last theater production in high school, he thought he was going to have another chance for the lead role. I am similar in that way. I am not much of an opportunist and try to get through life making the least amount of people angry as possible. While sometimes it pays off to take an opportunity that looks promising, there are definitely times where an opportunity looks great but ends up being a huge regret. It is always really hard to tell and that is what makes opportunity an interesting topic.
I think you are confounding not taking advantage of an opportunity when it arises, with opportunism. The latter means taking advantage of a situation to the detriment of somebody else. The former means you hesitate in the heat of the moment. Sometimes hesitation is not a good thing. (Other times it is the right thing to do.) But in either case hesitation is not opportunism.
ReplyDeleteAlso, your example does not illustrate that good things come to those who wait. Perhaps your friend might still get his chance at an acting gig on Broadway. But in the meantime, your story seems to illustrate your friend made a mistake about taking the part in Our Town. (The lead, I believe, is the Stage Manager. Way back when I actually saw that on Broadway with Henry Fonda, Jane's dad, in the role of the Stage Manager.)
I am confused what you mean when you say I was confounding those two. When I search opportunism it shows up with "the taking of opportunities as and when they arise, regardless of planning or principle", which is what I always understood opportunism as. Or are you saying what I wrote about was the opposite of opportunism? I guess that is more so what my story was about - somebody who was given an opportunity and did not act on it, thus not exactly an example of opportunism.
ReplyDeleteWhen I said good things come to those who wait, I meant that it was his mindset when he made the decision. Obviously if he could go back he would not say that same thing, but at the time he thought more opportunities would arise if he waited. I poorly worded that sentence.