At some point in time, you are offered a choice, but if you don't see the potential, it passes you by. Life is all about the choices you make, and seeing the potential when the opportunity arises.
Most of us spend all of our time in Relative Time, which has a beginning and an end. When the "end times" come, the end of the cycle, the opportunities comes to an end, and there is also the potential to leap into Absolute Time, which doesn't end.
This is where mankind is right now. As we learned with the Exit Strategy for Iraq proposal, the power games have reached their ultimate conclusion, and they no longer work. If they don't work anymore, what will work? We have stepped out of Relative Time and have entered into Absolute Time, and now our choices are unlimited.
But, if we don't see the potential of the choices, the opportunity passes by and we don't have the energy to keep moving forward.
In the second book of the Time Series, Father Time, a construct of the Universe, explains how life is full of choices, to go up, down or straight ahead.