Setting fire to rain

That’s Adel’s gift to 2011 and certainly one of my favourite of her songs. Though I like the song for the emotion in it, I interpret the phrase entirely differently; for me it means doing the impossible. You cannot set fire to the water, never mind droplets of water falling from the sky, where do you start. 

The year has finally kicked off and there are a lot of decisions to be made as a result of imminent opportunities. It is the making of decisions and managing feelings and expectations that has led me to feel that I am setting fire to rain. I don’t want to lose this opportunity as the saying “opportunity knocks but once”, looms ominously at the back of my mind. The thing is, I actually don’t believe that you only have one shot, I do think opportunity comes pretty often but we are not always in a position to act on it; we would be lucky to even recognise it; another saying declares that “Opportunities always look bigger going than coming” which explains why we don’t always see it or perhaps see it all too clearly in hindsight. Perhaps they are often disguised as problems, and any wise man worth his salt knows that for every problem there is an opportunity.

It seems like the opposite is the case here, the taking of this opportunity comes with its problems. The biggest problem of all is the risk of missing out on it. If opportunities look bigger going than coming, then I will be trounced by this one leaving; it is as clear as day to anyone  the magnitude of this one a-coming.