Amber Opportunities

I am a collector.

I collect amber colored rocks and pebbles.

I don't know if they are real amber - fossilized sap from ancient living trees - but I love their translucent, amber glow and their smoothness, like unfinished marbles holding secrets inside.

I pick up these pebbles along my daily walk down an unremarkable gravel road in the middle of rural Manitoba.  I walk down the same road every day and every once in a while I catch a glimpse of sunlight through a rock and pick that one up - the one that lets light through.  I don't look for these rocks, really - I'd rather look at the hills or listen to the rustling grasses - and yet I do.  I spot them because, in the back of my mind, I'm expecting to see them.  And there one glows in the midst of a multitude of dirty, rough, opaque rocks, in a spot I've passed many times before.  I avert my gaze at just the right time, or the sunbeams slant at just the right angle and I see it and pick it up, rub off the dust and feel its smoothness in my pocket all the way home where I drop it in my dish of amber rocks.

What would happen if I were to start viewing my life as my daily walk?

Many of my days are filled with sameness, "mundane-ness", routine.  Make lunches, do dishes, fold laundry, cook supper, tidy up, get kids to bed.  Repeat.  Repeat.  Repeat.  Like my daily walk, the scenery of my life stays essentially the same, changing only with the seasons.  What if I were to start living my life with the expectation that along the way I would be surprised with interesting opportunities?  They say that one usually finds what one is looking for, the way I find amber rocks because I'm expecting to see them.  Maybe there are amber opportunities along the way of my simple, routine life if only I have eyes to see them.  Perhaps life is more about one's eyes than about the scenery.