Spotting opportunity when everything else has been tried and, ultimately, has failed you is not always easy.

But there's a light at the end, a ray of sunshine, or flashing bulb of a witty idea or invention. Those come with much persistence. Not with folding your hands and calling it a "game." I would say, emphatically, that opportunity is around us every day, every hour, every second and every minute of time racing past. But like someone famous once said, "Opportunity comes dressed in overalls and looks like work." Nobody wants to stretch themselves like elastic to get to where they need to be, but by a show of hands, everyone in the world (even on this helium site) wants to get there. Some try harder than others. Some were born with the right pieces set on their table, which made their transitions in life a little easier than others, but wherever our starting point in life is, we control where we end up.

Opportunities, at least in my life, have often come in times of excruciating pain. During the summer of 2005, when it seemed like, and excuse my French, "All Hell Was Breaking Loose," I lost a couple of battles that summer, but in the end, recouped every battled I had lost and emerged victorious. For example, I had just finished my official senior year of college (wasn't done with school though), my twin-brother had tore his Achilles tendon in an exhibition game of basketball at my college's gymnasium, it hurt me deeply not just because he was my brother, my blood, or because I HAD to show some level of discomfort, but because he was a person with a life, that had goals.

That injury slowed him down. He was told that he would need surgery to fix the back of his heel, and being someone that has never particularly cared for doctors, he was very distraught by that news. Those plans of working at a construction site were history. He was told that he would be out of action for at least a couple of months, which he did not appreciate at all; it was a much needed surgery, though. So during this time period, he had the surgery which was a success. Afterward, he was instructed to wear a surgical boot on his left leg which would support him in his recovery process. He disdained being immobile, not being able to come and go as he pleased, he stayed in his room for the most part, and when I walked in I just felt a cold chill in the air.

I knew he wasn't pleased, not with me, but with himself. I know the thoughts had to be racing in his head, "How could I

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