Do we have to take responsibility for our own Luck or is that out of our hands?
The common misconception in regards to luck is that we don’t have to do any work for it. All we need to do is throw some salt over our shoulders, hang a horseshoe or carry a rabbit’s foot and the world will be at our feet. The clouds will part and all will be right with the world.
The reality is that unless we take “luck” into our own hands things won’t happen. As Emily Dickinson said “Luck is toil; fortune’s expensive smile is earned.” We earn our luck by doing the work to get to where we want to be. Antuco for example was able to receive good luck not because he felt he was deserving of it but because he held hope and followed the instructions for the tasks that were laid out before him.
Luck didn’t tell him that he was just going to get rich by doing nothing. He had to help a stranger and then take a chance on a possible genie. It was quite possible that he could have given up, sitting on his butt waiting for it to all come to him. It was only through his patience and perseverance that he was able to have a life that was beyond his wildest expectations, especially for someone with his position in society. Antuco met Luck half way, luck brought him to the stranger but Antuco was the one who befriended him. Likewise when his new friends told him about the genie that came to them in their dreams, Antuco could have done the same thing that they did and scoffed it up to a dream as a result of eating before bedtime. However, Antuco trusted his instinct and followed the lead to his ultimate reward.
It’s the same thing in everyday life. There is such a thing as luck but it just doesn’t come to us while we sit on our rear ends and watch soap operas, it comes through hard work and taking advantage of some good fortune that may come to us which may mean being in the right place at the right time. Sometimes it is buying that lottery ticket on just the right day or keeping your eyes open for that $20 bill on the sidewalk. Whatever it is it means that we have taken some of the necessary steps to bring us on the right path.
Whatever our view is when it comes to luck we should keep in mind that it’s there whether we choose to recognize it or not. We may need to do some work towards the ultimate reward but in the end we can look back and say that yes we worked hard for our goal but luck was on our side.
