Grasping opportunities and the power of alone time

Dear Dr. Alex,

I had an interesting day yesterday. In preparing to summit Mt. Rainier in September, I had planned a rigorous hike. I realized at the last minute, though, that I needed to get a new annual northwest forest permit in order to park at the intended trail head, so I made a small detour to REI to purchase the permit. While there, I noticed an attractive woman in line (a different queue than the one I was in). After picking up my permit, I got some needed information regarding GPS units, and then headed for the door. The timing was such that the woman I mentioned above got there first, and held the door for me. Other than saying, “thank you”, though, I couldn’t think of a conversation starter. While I have come up with one or two since then, this particular potential opportunity vanished as we went our separate ways. Of course, I haven’t a clue as to whether she was single or not, or attached, etc., but at this point I’ll never know.

What would you have done?

The hike was everything that I had expected and, with considerable snow on most of the trail, a bit more. Still, I needed this solitary hike for several reasons, and was glad to have pushed through. Yesterday evening, at home following the trek, I read “Be, Part II: Attitudes” in “The Tao of Dating”, and the final section, “Your own rite of passage” struck me, especially the sentence, “No phone, no email – just commune with yourself.” That pretty much described my day.

While I will likely have company for many of the hikes that I will use for conditioning for Mt. Rainier, I also envision more solitary climbs as well, and will treat all of them as rites of passage.

I look forward to hearing from you.

-Dean-

Thanks for sharing that, Dean, and I'm glad that you wrote in. Fortuitously, I was just taking a break from writing the new Mindtrack, the Meeting Maximizer, so I was thinking about such things.

The answer to your question is that no one grasps 100% of the opportunities that present themselves, so no sense beating ourselves up over it. In the meantime, you did the right thing by going home and thinking about how you'd handle the situation differently in the future. My recommendation in these situations is to say anything -- it almost doesn't matter what. If she's at all interested, she'll pick up the ball and run with it; and even if she doesn't, you've just initiated the interaction and bought some time. Women, if even remotely interested, are much more accommodating and forgiving of our attempts at wit than we tend to give them credit for. Give them a chance to express their interest by opening the repartee at the very least -- she'll thank you for it.

In the end, it's about training. If you have a few stock responses ready for situations like this, then they'll come out even if you can't think of anything clever to say (e.g. if a woman holds a door open, say "How very gentlemanly of you" or something like that). You don't need a thousand of them -- just two or three passably good ones should suffice. In the meantime, instead of mourning the lost opportunity ("oh no, she's gone") and affirming scarcity, express gratitude that someone like her waltzed into your life, albeit briefly, brightening your day, and there will be many more like her to to come (i.e. abundance).

All the best,

Dr Alex