“Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity.” - Seneca
The best warriors do not rely on luck. Luck is defined as, “Success or failure apparently brought by chance rather than through one's own actions.” Thus, in battle and in life a warrior cannot rely on chance and so they can only rely on their own skills. Success can sometimes seem non-linear or that it just seems to happen and so we think that a person’s success must be a function of luck. However, success is actually linear in that it only comes about as a function of one’s effort and that is why warriors of budo often say, “We reap what we sow.” It is easy to think of success as non-linear because we don’t “see” all of the toil which brought that person to that moment of their success and thus it is easy to perceive them as just being lucky. In budo and in life, there are no overnight successes nor are there any prodigies – everyone at some point or another will have to put in the work. There is a well-known story about the violinist Pablo De Sarasate that illustrates this point. After being called a genius by a critic after one of his performances, he quipped, “For 37 years, I practiced 14 hours a day and now they call me genius!” It is true that every person is born with talent and gifts and sometimes those gifts come to the surface early while in others it takes longer to come out. The surest way to bring out our gifts is to put in the hard work and then the talent will naturally come out. That is why Miyamoto Musashi said, “It takes 1,000 days to forge the spirit and another 10,000 days to polish it.” A good warrior knows that on a certain level they make their own luck because as Seneca said, “Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity.” When we put in the work towards our dreams and goals, sooner or later we will get “lucky” and that is why the best warriors don’t rely on luck.
Today’s goal: Don’t rely on luck. Put in the hard work to make your dreams and goals come true.