Luck | AdventAI

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Mar 23, 1882

"Luck."

"Just like his luck!" half of the boys said, when Charlie Foster won the State Scholarship.

They had made the same remark when his name had been sent in by the principal of the school to the superintendent as his best scholar. In all likelihood these same old school-fellows will keep on saying, "Just like his luck!" if Charlie ever becomes a Judge, or a Senator, or if he marries happily, or makes a fortune. Every step upward is attributed by some men and boys to that unknown quantity called "luck." And curiously enough, just as "Like his luck" is used to account for the success of one's friends, so "Just like my luck" is used to explain our own failures.

"It is just my luck! There was not a single question about anything I knew. I had crammed up the capitals of the States, square root, and the conjugations, and I was asked about mountain ranges, compound interest, and the fifth declension. I always was unlucky!"

In all this talk about "luck" is there not a good deal of inconsistency? We never employ the word to account for our own successes or somebody else's failures. When the said Charlie Foster misses a catch at base-ball, or catches a crab in a race, we do not cry, "How unlucky he is?" but, "What a muff that Charlie Foster is!" and when we ourselves manage to get on the roll of honor, we resent with virtuous indignation any congratulation on our luck. "Luck, indeed!" we growl; "there was no luck at all. It was just hard work and nothing else."

Moreover this talk about luck is, in the first place, somewhat unmanly, not to say cowardly. To trust to luck is a confession that one cannot do anything by one's own labor or one's own intellect. It is really, my boy, an acknowledgment that you have no independence of character, no strength of will, no patience, and no perseverance.

Trusting in luck is a very different thing from trusting in Providence. Providence aids those who aid themselves, and just in proportion as they do their work honestly and conscientiously. Luck is a kind of capricious spirit which is expected to set at naught all the laws of nature for our advantage, or to our disadvantage, without the slightest apparent reason why it should intervene at all. If there is such a thing, that can either make or mar us, our first duty is not to be its slave, but to make ourselves its master.

We must not stand like beggars at a street corner until luck drops a few coppers into our hats. We must be a law unto ourselves, and not mere playthings of chance. Let us be honest enough to acknowledge our own mistakes. The grumbler who laments,

"I never had a slice of bread, Cut nice and smooth and long and wide, But it fell upon the sanded floor, And always on the buttered side,"

fancies himself unlucky. If he were honest, he would blame himself for not keeping good hold of his bread and butter, and if he thought about it, he would see that falling on the buttered side was a natural result of the way in which he was holding it.

This notion of luck very often arises from a mixture of conceit and jealousy. We do not like to allow that another has more talent than we have, and has his faculties better. He has, however, if we examine his career, been more studious, more careful, more observant. It would be much more noble of us, instead of repeating like parrots the word "luck," meaning thereby that he has got a reward which he does not deserve, to candidly say, "He has deserved all he has won; he is the better fellow."

Another evil arising from this talk about luck is that at last we actually believe in it. Once under the influence of this notion, we exercise no caution or foresight. "Luck," we say, "will bring us through." Fortunately for our future and permanent success, luck does nothing of the sort. In the long run luck is nowhere. You may have heard of games of chance—gambling games, as they are styled—and of lotteries, and the like. You have heard of people being lucky at them. The professional gambler and lottery-keeper know better than that; they know that even in throwing dice there is very little luck. The man who is lucky to-day is unlucky to-morrow; it is in reality skill or trickery, and not luck, that enables the professional gambler to pursue his career.

Lucky people, in fact, are people who have thoroughly trained themselves for the battle of life. They have eyes open to perceive a coming danger, and have learned how to avoid it; they recognize a difficulty, and know how to overcome it; they see an opportunity, and know how to make use of it; and they are ready with all their faculties alert, to seize it before it has gone forever. Their success is visible to every eye, and arrests our attention at once. What we do not see, very often what we will not see, but deliberately shut our eyes to, is the foresight they exercise, the careful training they have undergone, the long practice which has made them perfect.

There is nothing brilliant or showy about this practice and training, and therefore we have not noticed them. But they are there, nevertheless. To all of us, every day of our lives, opportunities present themselves which pass without our heeding them, or if we see them, without our having the courage and skill to avail ourselves of them. We let them fly, never to return, because we are not ready, and then we cry, "Just like our luck!" As Shakespeare says,

"The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, But in ourselves that we are underlings."

Away with your notions of luck. Be manly and trust to work. Do your duty and let luck do its worst.—Harper's Young People.