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By Jess Utz 

Taking advantage of opportunity

Jess, shut up!

 

Last updated 7/31/2019 at 9:45am



Every once in a while, an opportunity walks down the street, looks you in the face and extends a hand. A pivotal moment looks upon you and smiles. This is when making the wrong choice can be detrimental to your future, to someone else’s or to someone watching. An opportunity also can wear many different hats and look very differently.

It could be a word of advice, an employment change, a chance to spend time with someone or to have dinner with interesting people. There are many other faces of opportunity as well. These opportunities and how we handle them can affect a lot of things deep into our future as well.

I was talking yesterday with a valuable business owner in our community. We were talking about possible job shadowing opportunities for high school students in her professional business. She is leery. Why? Because in the past some fumbled their opportunities. While going into a very professional profession, in which the student was interested, one student was on the phone most of the day. A different student asked to leave during a very important learning opportunity because he or she was hungry.


These squandered opportunities have soured possible opportunities for others. Now these were kid examples, and these disciplines need to be taught to our young ones by parents, teachers and society. We need to take advantage of our opportunity to teach.

We also have an opportunity to help each other. We need to look out for one another, speak truth to those who find us with ears tuned to our voices, and speak life, not death, into others.

We also have opportunities to be positive Americans. We need to not just listen to a single media outlet and grasp its message as the facts. We need to dig ourselves in, be our own news anchor, and see what is really happening out there. Then we need to act, vote and stand up for whatever the results are. Not in a “I did not get my way” attitude but in a “let’s work this out” attitude.

Let’s take advantage of opportunity that only we as Americans have. We have the freedom to act, speak, and do just about whatever we want to do. So let’s do the right thing without spoiling the future of others.

We can go many different directions with what is sitting in front of us. We could ignore, walk around, take advantage of, or start a conversation.

I encourage you to start the conversation with opportunity and see where it may take you.

I also challenge you to teach the next generation to seek out opportunities, as well, and go all-in with them. Teach them how to take advantage and to have integrity when given the chance to learn and grow. Let’s stop pointing fingers and take responsibility.

 

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