Do not step over miracles

One of my favourite sayings is "Don't step over miracles." It means do not miss what is right in front of you because you were not paying attention.

There is an old idea that luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity. That sounds like a lot of work. Preparation here only means being ready to receive something good when it turns up. Opportunities come in all shapes and sizes and they are rarely obvious, so you need your eyes and your heart open or you will walk straight past them.

Picture a man called John

John has a big job with a lot of stress. He works twelve hour days. He leaves the house at six every morning, while his wife and their ten month old son are still asleep.

All day he answers eighty emails, writes presentations for the board and looks after a team of twenty. He rarely stops for lunch because he cannot spare the time. He is anxious, and he is making a great deal of money. The family lives in a very large house that he hardly sees, because he travels across the country so often.

He has been tired for months. He has had bad bouts of indigestion, but there is no time for the doctor, because the company is depending on him. He is more and more annoyed with colleagues who do not work his hours, and wonders why they have not all been fired.

He comes home late. His wife is asleep beside the baby. He has a quick drink to help him sleep, gets a few hours, and starts all over again.

Can you spot what he is stepping over?

The first is his own body. It is telling him something, and John quietly steps over it.

The second is his family. They are asleep when he leaves and asleep when he gets home. He might as well have bought a frame with a picture of a family already in it. He steps over them every single night.

Thursday

You can probably guess how this kind of story usually ends. But every day brings a new chance to change your life, and that is not how John's ends.

One night he is so tired he falls asleep in the spare room without checking the alarm. It is not set. On Thursday morning nothing rings, and his wife has no idea he is still home, because he never sleeps in the spare room.

He wakes at ten in a panic and runs downstairs for his phone, thinking of all the calls he has missed. On the way, he stops. Through the door of the family room he sees his wife laughing and clapping her hands, and his son taking his very first steps.

For once, John does not step over the miracle. He sees that something has to change.

If you were John

Plenty of people reading this were John for a while. Or married to him, and spent those years asleep beside the baby. The first steps are long gone now. The habit of stepping over things tends to stay.

So it is worth asking what you are walking past today. Clutter of any kind hides what is in front of you, whether it lives in the cupboards, in a career you still carry around in your head, or in old worries. Clear some of it and good things are much easier to see.

The saying goes that you cannot see the forest for the trees. I would add that you cannot see what your life is for while you are worrying about what it is supposed to be.

From the archive. First written for my journal years ago, and rewritten for life after 50.