on the absence of luck

From my last post, you'd probably say,

"Yes, it is easy when you have a significant amount of privileges that able to get you to get on to speed with those opportunities, right? But what if I don't have much, to begin with, and every time I try, I fail?"

Come, have a sit.

You see, on my birthday this year, two of my friends, pretty close ones, congratulated me with,

"Happy birthday, the luckiest person on earth."

"As life has showered you with blessings, I hope today made you see that."

No ill-intention and I remain grateful for their wishes, but, just to stress that luck, blessings, and all those could differ greatly from what other people see, and what we truly experience. Social media biases? Perhaps, but not to blame. It is natural that we share the positive side on a greater platform and less-happy news to a more inner circle - what is a mistake is assuming you know a full-picture of someone by looking at their social media. Or as Hans Rosling put it, having a perception of the world through news is like city-tour in Berlin relying on holiday snapshots as a map.

Bear with me with that intro, but what I am saying is,

Just like a normal distribution curve, most of us fail at one point or another. Some fail more often than others. And those people I discussed in the previous post might be at the other end of the spectrum, but truly, you never know. That's my first point.

My second point is, to compare ourselves with others, no matter how often we hear it is not a healthy measurement, is inevitable. I'd admit. We are so used to comparing things, making a bar, in which I presume just our nature to process immense things in the world to our brain. Jordan B. Peterson, however, would advise to instead comparing ourselves with our own past-selves. Because that's how you measure progress, right? Seeing how much you have grown? What are you aiming at when you compare yourself to your friend? Both of you have gone totally different process - it is not at all a reliable method to have, so what's the use?

Now that we have got rid of that, let me tell you, failure sucks. Yes, you might learn from them. Yes, it will humble you. But it still stings. Especially when you know you are the only one who fails. Or you have failed so very often. Or when at some points it just like a dice thrown on cardboard, it is just arbitrary. Yet all this randomness somehow pointing towards your failure.

Have you ever felt like that? Because, I, the luckiest person on earth as my friend deemed, very so often feel as such.

I eat failures for breakfast since junior high, my friend. It is like a series of unfortunate events, you would have no idea how close, or how remotely far I'd get to something I really want, only to see it vanish from my own grasp. It gets me into a habit where I don't tell people when I am in the process of pursuing something. Embaressment? Perhaps. But also because I know from experience that nothing is ever certain. Not until it passes.

Failures can do evil, among goods, and one of them is they will attack your self-esteem, especially when you fail so often. Look, I am by no means allergic to failure. I find it efficient to fail early, in fact. So I could learn and fail better, if I should, and get closer to success. But not everything is iterative start-up game and often times the opportunity only comes once in a while, or non-existent at all. And when you face so many rejections, even from those you were confident about let's say, it could get rather... bitter.

And I am sorry to tell you that at this point, all you have is grit. If you want to get there, there is really nothing else you can do, except to try again. I know it might sound ridiculous - I used to get slightly irritated by people who would carelessly say try this and that - us, the failing, have tried them all. But really, it doesn't get much further than that, does it? If you stop trying, it won't get to you anyway now, will it?

Just know that it'll make a good story in the end.