Work and Money
Is continually failing to find a suitable storefront necessarily bad?
English translation draft · Based on the Chinese article. This is not a word-for-word translation approved by Master Shengyuan.
Not necessarily. I have experienced urgently wanting to rent a storefront but never finding a suitable place, and later feeling glad I had not rented one. Looking back, the disappointment at the time did not have only a negative side.
We once wanted a divination space at Shilin Night Market, thinking the crowds offered opportunities for promotion. After searching for a while, we still found nowhere we liked that was suitable. Later, the pandemic reduced the crowds. Seeing many shops without customers but still obliged to pay rent, I realised that, had we rented then, we might have faced the same pressure.
From my faith perspective, I feel that perhaps this was a good arrangement and that I received protection. But this is a retrospective understanding of that particular experience, not a reason to assign a cause every time someone cannot find a storefront. When the path we intended does not work out, we can still examine how the conditions have changed and where we can go next.