Donald Morris

Opportunity: Optimizing Life's Chances
Opportunity knocks, but it doesn’t break the door down. Mark Twain said he was “seldom able to see an opportunity until it had ceased to be one.” Francis Bacon wrote that “a wise man will make more opportunities than he finds.” Albert Einstein noted that “in the middle of difficulty lies opportunity.” And Rabelais reported “I have known many who could not when they would, for they had not done it when they could.” Is our understanding of opportunity limited to clever sayings, homely folk wisdom, and contradictory aphorisms or can we mount a more systematic approach to learning what makes an opportunity?

Are there practical implications to gaining a firmer understanding of what constitutes an opportunity? Author Donald Morris believes there are and convincingly demonstrates his belief in the context of what he calls high-end opportunities—those rare but critically important and time-bound occasions where what we choose to do or to become inexorably shapes and alters the future course of our lives. Reliably recognizing and effectively confronting such opportunities is an ability that can be honed and refined when we become aware of the disparate dimensions of opportunity and learn to view important problems by focusing in turn on each facet comprising an opportunity’s richness and potential.

We have all missed opportunities in our lives, yet despite this fact we are brashly confident that we know what opportunity looks like. The author challenges our uncritical confidence in this ability and supplies ample evidence showing how and why we are bound to miss opportunities. Understanding and recognizing our blind spots lays bare misconceptions and effectively arms us with the necessary perspective for recognizing opportunities. Questioning our commonsense views of opportunity leads to a comprehensive picture of opportunity allowing a clearer view and providing critical insights for confronting the landmark decisions that define our lives. A fuller understanding of opportunity, it is maintained, fortifies us with a keener ability to recognize and grasp the circumstances that constitute important opportunities. Through graphic examples and illustrations we are guided to a fuller appreciation of the nature of opportunity and to a deeper understanding of what makes some people better equipped to spot those opportunities that others blissfully pass by.

In excavating and exposing the defining characteristics of opportunity, I have synthesized insights from a range of sources including history, criminology, economics, anthropology, physics, literature, biology, business, psychology, poetry, law, sociology, religion, and philosophy. From this amalgamation emerges a picture of what constitutes opportunity.

Prometheus Books, 2006



Review from Amazon

Serious exploration for serious readers, January 23, 2007

Reviewer: Neil R. Lichtman

The title of this book may lead you to believe it's a self-help book. My bet is that it was not written with that first in mind. However, anyone who reads it can benefit from a self-help point-of-view. Actually, this book is an exhaustive examination of the concept of "opportunity." It is so exhaustive, that I might add that it also is exhausting but, well worth it. I read it all, but I confess to jumping around. Some of the chapter titles grabbed me instantly. Others could wait.

There seems to be a genre of books that take an idea, and works it nearly to death (so to speak.) Shorter books like Zero or Salt come to mind. Their length and style aim at a popular audience. The length and style of Opportunity aims at a more diligent audience, one that isn't afraid to delve deeply. While "only" 394 pages, these are tightly written, closely argued pages...not breezy reading.

A somewhat lengthy quote from the Introduction will give you a sense of how deep this is:

"Our recognition of opportunity is affected by (1) the problems we face and the nature of those problems, (2) our notion of sacrifice, (3) how we evaluate risk, (4) how we perceive time, (5) what conditions we believe will improve out life, (6) the techniques we use to predict the future, or at least the specific outcomes of our actions, (7) our susceptibility to feelings of regret and remorse, and (8) the causal influences we believe operate in the world - laws of nature, divine providence, occult forces, fate, and so on."

The author then goes on to create an approach that deconstructs opportunity so you know it when you encounter it. The five components are: (1) the role of time, (2) the role of sacrifice, (3) the role of risk, (4) the existence of a catalyst, and (5) the possibility of regret or remorse. The book contains tons of examples...some from real life, some from literature so well known that the points come across clearly.

When it came to issues, my favorite explorations were:

The difference between "regret" and "remorse."
The difference between "opportunity costs" and "sunk costs."
The difference between "opportunity" and "opportunism."
Where opportunity exists and doesn't exist in a discussion of poverty.
How opportunity presents itself in theological and philosophical systems from
Calvinism to Existentialism.
What we do as humans to either take advantage of an "opportunity" or "never
miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity" (not the author's phrase, but one
that's popular now to describe various political groups.)

The author looks at the issue of opportunity from many perspectives: business, legal, social policy, economic policy, criminology, religion, just to name a few. If any of those areas are passions to you, you'll find this book worth your time.

This book will have a prominent place on my bookshelf. For some, it's the kind of book you want people to know you've read. While that applies to me, more importantly, it's the kind of book I want to recall that I, indeed, have read, and have used to help me in discussions/debates with friends and foes.