Windows Of Opportunity Which Open And Close

My friend opened a fortune cookie which said "act before the window of opportunity closes" and she thought "what the hell does THAT mean."

Here is my response.

Life is a series of "windows of opportunity."

Those windows are constantly opening, and then closing. Often we are not aware. We have many choices as we pass through life. When we are age 6, we can choose to take up ballet, and we have some small chance of becoming a professional. When we turn 20, we can still choose to take up ballet, but we will probably never be professional, because most top professionals start training at the age of 6.

In our teens and 20s, we have windows of opportunity for education and training. As we reach our 30s and 40s, gradually those windows close partly because our energy and aptitude diminish with age.

For women, the "biological clock" ticking away is an obvious window of opportunity which eventually closes.

Of course, simply because a window of opportunity is OPEN does not mean that we should defenestrate ourselves by jumping out of it. That is, the opportunity for ballet, or marriage or having children is not necessarily the right choice for any given person.

But then, fortune cookies are designed to be generic and open to subjective interpretation.

Now that I am 60, I see how many windows of opportunity have passed me by, or perhaps it is I who passed them by for one reason or another.

My friend has made the choice to say no to the kind of heavy prescription medications to which many (Michael Jackson and Keith Ledger and Elvis Presley, et al.) fell victim. I made the choice to say no to alcohol and tobacco over a year ago.

Some windows may never open for us again. Other windows are always opened to us, but we need to close them.