Oh, Lucky Stargazers!
Morning Thoughts #45
What good is good luck if you don’t put it to the test? Friends, if you were born under a lucky star, do not be afraid of long journeys through the night. Bet on what is most nebulous, oh holy nebulas! Dare to use up your luck. When fortune truly loves you, the roll of the dice is a more dependable form of transportation – life transportation – than any wheel. Roll to test your luck, and keep rolling once you've confirmed it. Friends, your lucky star does not rise in any afterworlds. There's no use in saving the gifts it gives you. Our dutiful bureaucrats, if they could, would tax any bequest of luck you make into oblivion anyway! So live! The star chose you, so be worthy of its choice. Do not throw away the advantages you may have been given out of guilt! Use them fully to honor your star's generosity. And when people speak of great men and women, it would perhaps be more correct to describe them as lucky.
Oh distant Quasars, stir the pots of myself! Oh spiraling galaxies, teach me the ultimate meaning of momentum!
But alas, friends, we are living through an epidemic of wasted luck! A generation born under the luckiest of stars, yet sleeping every night away in long, dreamless slumbers. They think they are being charitable by renouncing the generosity of their lucky stars (I know this impulse well because it once possessed me too).
I wish it weren't so, but you cannot teach luck, and it is very, very hard to give luck away unused. The sad fate of the unlucky is that they are masters at squandering good luck. Have pity on them, but your pity won't amount to much if you've thrown away your luck before it can help either you or them! Friends, it is generally not wise to regift the luck you have been given! You are not being selfish when you trust that the universe knew what it was doing when it placed you here in this body, when it gave you the origin it did. How often authentic gratitude works as a telescope that allows the discovery of the existence of our lucky star!
Woe to those who place their goals below themselves! Woe to those who are ungrateful when receiving the universe’s gifts. Woe to those ashamed of their luck! Believe in a General greater than yourself (Oh Napoleon in the stars) and trust this General’s judgement. They have placed you here because they have use for you. Tossing aside the endowments you have been given is scorning the wisdom of the universe. Oh comfortable American with a guilty conscience, I suggest that any guilt you feel doesn’t stem from the privileges you’ve received but comes from the little you’ve done with them (and the little you fear you’ll still do). Is it true that you’d rather renounce your blessings than do the work in living up to them? Is it a lazy guilt that tempts you? Woe to any army that voluntarily gives away their position on high ground before the battle even begins!
Friends, luck, like everything else, has an expiration date. Should you be so fortunate to be in possession of it, do not let any of it go to waste! Do not follow the example of those who purposefully deflate any appearance of personal luck so as to make themselves appear small and claim they were small all along. Woe to a culture that incentivizes bad luck and makes it fashionable! Pity the unlucky, but never make an ideal of them. The future of all good things is doomed the moment the world’s lucky lose heart, removing yet another source of infusion of luck from our perpetually hard-luck world.