When I was in high school, a friend and I were talking about life in general. In the conversation, she said (with the incredible maturity and profundity that teens have), "I don't want to live my life as a victim of circumstance." Wow, I thought, that was deep, though the circumstances she spoke of were not. :)

It's been over 20 years since, and her words still echo in my head.  I took a test once that said I had a very high internal locus of control. In plain English this means I am a control-freak, someone who is convinced that the outcome of things rests solely in her hands.  Hence, there are few things in the world that irritate me more that people who wait for things to happen.  I don't think that these people are evil. I just think they grossly underestimate their power for self-determination.

And I am not the only one who feels this way.  I have a friend who teaches creativity to public school teachers.  As one of her exercises, she tells them to imagine a problem and then think of it's solution.  Note that these problems/solutions are fictious.  It disturbs her, therefore, that the solutions invariably involve going to someone else for help--the mayor, the principal, the congressman, or even God--or else simply accepting the misfortune as an unavoidable twist of fate.

While I realize that luck, seredipity, and external interventions are a part of our lives, there is something to be said for opportunity meeting preparedness.  There is little we can do to control opportunity (except perhaps to ferret it out). However, there is much we can do to be prepared for it.  And we should do what we can to be prepared, lest we remain victims of circumstance.