Dr Shailendra Mishra (IPS)
It’s so easy to brush aside failure saying, you weren’t lucky. Even more, discredit the efforts of the person who succeeded, by calling out his good luck, that rescued him. The thing that is difficult to understand is that, luck too chooses its beneficiary. If luck were to be a cricket team selector and were to be tasked for picking up a winning team combination for the World Cup, imagine who all would be picked up ? All the players who would have performed fantastically well in the matches they’ve played, in the domestic circuit, have trained well on their fitness, have the right attitude for the big games, and have demonstrated enough skills to rise up to the occasion whenever demanded, were sure to be picked up. Do you think, luck would’ve picked up, the ones, who refused to play in the leagues, the unfit junkies, persons with low will to win or the ones who would’ve just waited for luck to smile at them, doing absolutely nothing ? Luck indeed matters for the ones who matter to luck.
“Karmanye vadhikaraste, ma phaleshu kadachana, Ma karmaphalaheturbhurma te sangostvakarmani”, announced Lord Krishna, in the battlefield of Kurukshetra , when Arjun wanted to know, what is he going to achieve out his efforts as a warrior. It means, “You’ve the right to work only but never to its fruits. Let not the fruits of action be your motive, nor let your attachment be to inaction”. We all are prisoners of our own expectations and fail to be the master of our complete efforts. Be it in any field of life, what cannot be surpassed is hard work and positive will. A child is born only when the womb nurtures it for nine good months, the mother labours through with pain, that is described as worse than a broken bone and the infant gasps the first stream of air, pulling life out of it to stay breathing. None of these can be attributed to pure luck. Try telling a mother that she was plainly lucky to have given birth ! The hard work that goes behind a successful story is seldomly told in as many words.
There is another dilemma in many persons mind about struggles, they face in their quest to success, when there is a comparison with the struggles of other competitors. Everyone has fare share of challenges and advantages. A specially abled person is challenged to live a normal day to day life, but is advantaged with highest will to succeed. Similarly a rich person has an advantage of financial support, but maybe challenged with high expectations of near and dear ones. It has been very difficult for star kids to prove themselves when they are compared to their successful parents. Many end up failing under such duress. A person with a raw slate can scribble anything that comes to mind and thus becomes a free soul to write a destiny for oneself, vis a vis, persons whose destinies are decided by everyone else, other than her. The grass on either side is equally green and needs to be equally watered. There is no point in dwelling upon anyone else’s struggle, anyone else’s advantage and most important, anyone else’s luck. One should stand up tall, take control of his life, identify the threats he faces in his journey to fame, mitigate them and water his grass enough, for the sunlight to make the green, greener than anyone else’s.
The theory of luck is probabilistic and not deterministic. Luck alone doesn’t determine where we end up eventually. It doesn’t determine whether we achieve our goal or otherwise. It surely doesn’t determine our self satisfaction of having given our best, our happiness of having competed in the most trying circumstances and our self pride in having fought, when everybody around us said that we couldn’t. Luck only throws us choices. A choice of working hard or sitting back, doing nothing. It allows us to choose between karma and excuses. It throws upon the board for us to either pick up our brushes and paint a future or just allow the unknown powers of destiny to work up the most beautiful portrait. Destiny has never painted pictures of persons who haven’t allowed it an opportunity to do so. A lottery winner , someday, must have got up from his relaxed couch, walked in the tropical heat, spent his cola money on a piece of paper with random numbers, prayed his heart out, while others were busy playing handball and had allowed himself an opportunity to be rich. And be rest assured, he must’ve done this exact same thing, day in and day out, for years together. The theory of probabilism, allowed luck to smile at him, with welcoming gestures. I don’t know of a single lucky person, who has won a lottery ticket, without having to possess one. The luck would always ask your efforts, about the kind of person you are, before making a bet on you. One has to be into consideration at the first place for having any chance to be lucky. The golden pass to such a league is only available to the ones who have worked hard towards achieving it.
The transition from mediocracy to meritocracy is not a tough one . The coming of age to excellence from just being meritorious needs hard toil. The UPSC selected 933 odd aspirants from over 11 lakh applicants this year. Does that make the 934th aspirant any less meritorious? The difference between the marks of the non selected aspirants vis a vis the selected ones must be minuscule. That’s where luck plays its part. But only “that much”. The catch is to be the 934th aspirant at least in the first place. The right to be unlucky only resides with persons who have worked as hard as the ones who have been lucky. Rest can only improve their efforts to rise up. Luck is a very welcoming charm. It’s out there to receive us. The only price it asks of anyone is, hard work and focus. It doesn’t discriminate. It has no discretion. It’s just that it has limited seats to offer for everyone to fit in. Being unlucky, is not same as being incapable. But being a non starter is akin to be begging for being unlucky.
Destiny too has its own ways of rewarding efforts. Hard work never has gone in vain. Was Thomas Edison lucky the 1000th. time in inventing the electric bulb ? Or he just realised that the invention of an electric bulb is a 1000 step process and each of those steps have to be walked without expecting to succeed after every attempt. The journeys have been far more rewarding than the destinations. A wanderer who starts enjoying his journey can never be lost. The destinations are just mere milestones. They’ll be coming and going. They’ll be more to come and go. The joy of having walked the path, one decides for himself can never be described by the achievements of such destinations. Enjoying the process, trusting in the vagaries of nature and giving the best one can, towards the efforts that can be made, in true sense takes us nearer to what we have cherished all through. Destiny can always be mastered. Destiny is not judged by achievements. Many of us end up unhappy, even after achieving what we set out for. Many of us are bubbling, exotic souls having enjoyed the toil which we chose out of no where to test our convictions. Results matter only, if we have worked hard for them. Results matter only, as much, if our hard work leads us to greater goals, bigger than what destiny hasn’t allowed us to settle in with.
Our trust in the creator must motivate us to have faith in destiny. It must repose our acceptance of the luck factor. At the same time, it must make us believe that destiny and luck are only for the ones who catch up to them. The ones who get the glory of rivers, by leaving the comfort of mountains, the ones who accept the pain of chisel and become a worshipped idol, the ones who say yes to struggle, when the compatriots are sitting cozy, are the ones to have luck on their side. The only way to get lucky is to work our hearts out, stay positive, be thankful for the opportunity, pray from the soul and believe that you are successful, no matter what the result is.
(The author is presently posted as DIG, Terror Financing and False Currency Division of NIA)
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