How to Make Luck Obey You

Luck is a lightning-flash that gleams and then vanishes — how, then, can it be drawn into the midst of our continuing life?...

Luck is sparks from the stars of happiness that we embrace in the dreams of our nights, and that slip from us and fly away when the dawn of waking opens our eyes. But to what extent do those sparks reach us? That is what our understanding falls short of.

Luck is a winged god, swift in running and in flight, beating his wings here and fluttering them there; and the lucky one is he upon whom his eye falls — whose hands manage to touch him and take hold of him...

But is luck a slave to us, or a sultan who rules over us as he pleases?

Is luck servant or master? And is there such a thing as luck in life?...

This is what I shall try to make clear in the light of my reflections upon the various happenings that pass one after another through our daily life without our grasping their causes — happenings that often reach the likeness of legends and fables... What I wish to present, however, is luck as it comes through our efforts and our constant striving — not the luck we fancy comes to us of itself while we squat in a corner of our house!...

Luck is a bird that will not fall prey to us of its own accord unless we work by every kind of attempt to snare it! How often we hear this word repeated on the lips of those around us, without diving into the depths of its secrets and the strangeness of its riddles...

Some believe that luck, or what is fated, are palpable things, and so they entrust the course of their lives to them; this is what keeps them from striving, and it often sinks them into mental decline and leads them to intellectual stagnation and shortsightedness, until they can no longer see beyond their noses.

Let us not await luck, then, from the world of our imagination, or from a niche in the wall of our house; and let none of us think that luck is the gift of Father Christmas, which the little ones are told comes down the chimney. No — the flourishing of our luck is bound fast to the measure of our striving and our diligence. Luck is an enchanted thread which hidden gods weave, entrusting to us the casting of it; and every one of our friends or acquaintances whom this thread of ours touches comes to have a hand in shaping our luck. If we expose ourselves to the path of luck, it means becoming acquainted with a wider society and mingling with more people; and by this measure one of us turns around to find himself surrounded by a web of these threads that carry luck from one person to another. Misery is the child of the sluggishness of our souls, and luck is the recompense of our effort and our forward drive in the procession of life. And to be able to keep the threads of luck about us, we need the enthusiasm and the renewal that we shed upon our moral self, and upon our thinking mental powers, which flow from a hidden spring lying deep within our minds.

How I love to liken our life to a sea of boundless expanse, and ourselves to adventuring sailors plunging through the swells of its deep waters in search of the new. The mariner driven by an inner enthusiasm, captain of the ship of his own soul, is made by every shock only more eager to storm the terrors; events beget in his depths a love of life and a forward rush into its current, so that he loves it with all its faults — with its pains and torment, its folly and vanity. He finds delight in learning the courses of other men's ships, and there grows in his soul a love of union with his brothers in humanity — not to learn their opinions of his own person, nor for some aim hidden in his soul from which he seeks material profit, but to uncover the features of their souls and the strange things hidden in their breasts, to enter into the very heart of their lives and learn the ways they live together and the paths they follow — and he stops suddenly to find that, without any intention of his, he has woven between himself and them a web of the threads of luck.

Anxiety and confusion wear out the strength of our relations with others and spoil our ties with those we live among, so that we watch for calamities; and doubt about the state of the future — these two work their evil effect upon a person and make of him a pessimist, odd in his ways and clouded in temper. The choice of some occupation, or of a beloved hobby, is the best way to cure him and to bring happiness into his heart. And I shall not fix the situations in which the spark of luck may pierce into a person's life and change its course.

Often the belief in luck and fate overwhelms human thought in states of deep grief and deadly despair; this is nothing but an excuse to which those who speak of it resort in order to lighten the weight of the blow and lift part of the affliction from its victims — consoling them somewhat, as they see that they were not the first in what has happened, nor will they be the last.

One man of letters said: "Luck is a word as obscure as human souls; with it all the people of the earth console themselves, and by it they show the instinctive faith the heart cannot do without." And is what the Lord Christ spoke to us centuries and generations ago anything but a practical application of the theory of luck through effort and striving? Is the parable of the talents which the master of the house distributed among his servants anything but an incitement to us to strive and struggle for the increase of the material and moral capacities which the great Creator has bestowed

upon us? He who worked with the five talents, and spent the greater effort, won double his capital; he who traded with the two talents won their equal; and punishment fell upon him who held back from striving — pessimistic about his morrow, fearful of his future, imputing harshness and injustice to his master — and who buried the talent deep in the earth, so that when the appointed day came he gave it back to its owner with hands through which ran the shiver of dread and fear, and looks overcast with hesitation and torpor. By my life! What was our friend waiting for? Was he watching for luck to go crying through the market, "Follow me and I will lead you to the mines of gold"? Or was it sloth that held him down and paralyzed his movements?...

Searching has a powerful effect in the literary and moral field: reading is among the factors that shape our luck, for an advertisement in a newspaper opens the ways of livelihood to many, and in an article in the corner of a sometimes neglected library we find the reflection of our own thoughts stripped of illusions, and it unties a difficult knot or resolves a deadly crisis. Watching plays performed, and the display of life in moving pictures, has the strongest effect upon individuals and groups; a book that means nothing to us changes the course of another man's life, and brings out of him a new element the nation needs. And I have read of a lady who saved her married life from the hell in which she was living with her husband, after seeing a play that reflected to her the truth of her own character and acted out her deeds before the eye of her waking soul, guiding her to the path by which she might travel to a life of right guidance and peace of mind!

Some may grumble, and others object, claiming that many people struggle all their lives while luck thwarts them at every step, whereas there are others who possess neither the same gifts nor any trace of enthusiasm and drive in their souls, yet who leap over whole stages of success. Is it luck that backs them? Or chance, which brings miracles the human mind falls short of tracing? Is luck one of the marvels beyond nature?

No, my dear reader! Our merging into society, our positive welcome of life with all its hidden stores of gladness and grief, the ability to seize opportunities when they come, and the facing of hardships with a smile — all this is what will make of us, in the end, lucky people who climb the ladder of life toward advancement... toward a better life... toward an ampler, happier luck!...