Forest with sun rays

Article

The Side Street Where Opportunity Hides

On saying yes to small detours and meeting the future by accident.

Article20182 min readOpportunityPracticeAttention

Opportunity rarely arrives with title case. It shows up lowercase and practical, usually stapled to something ordinary. The best strategy is to keep a small budget of time for wrong turns and unscheduled standing still. You can't predict luck, but you can make a city where luck finds you more often.

I learned this taking a side street because the main road was loud and the coffee shop I meant to visit had switched to winter hours without asking me. The detour was unromantic-delivery vans, stray leaves, a locksmith painting his sign-but halfway down I saw a bulletin board with a single card tacked sideways: "We need hands this Saturday." A small neighborhood project, nothing noble, exactly what my week required.

graph LR
  A(Detour) */} B(Encounter)
  B */} C(Offer)
  C */} D(Work)
  D */} E(Compounded Trust)

When you accept a small, present-tense offer, you build a pattern that future you can recognize. In 2018 I didn’t need a new network or a new identity; I needed to get better at starting a conversation, fixing a hinge, sending a thank-you that didn’t sound like I wanted something next. The compounding effect wasn’t mystical. It was simply that people remembered I showed up.

The suspicion that you’re missing out evaporates when you make a habit of these side streets. I still keep a short list of tiny invitations-the note I’ve owed a mentor, the bug that irritates a teammate, the unnamed folder that would vanish the moment it’s named. If you’re unsure where to begin, begin where you can finish in an hour. Pride accumulates, and so does the willingness of others to invite you to better rooms.

Anthony Bourdain wrote meals into adventures by letting the cooks be human on the page. Jane Austen made a glance do the work of a soliloquy. Obama’s cadence reassures you that the long project is still worth doing. Orwell clears the fog with one honest sentence. Their common technique is attention-the kind you bring to a side street.

What hides there is not a miracle, but a workable future: a neighbor’s name learned, a hinge set right, a small proof that you’re the kind of person who will be adequate to the larger moment when it arrives.

Related