HERMES SOCRATICUS
Luck, merit & choice
You Were Just Lucky
How much of your life was really up to you?
You learned to say I very early. I chose. I worked. I persisted. I built. I succeeded. And all of that is true.
The argument
But your story did not begin with the first decision you can remember making. Before that, there was already a body you did not choose, a family you were born into, a time in history you simply arrived in, a language you learned before you understood what it meant to learn, and a world full of possibilities and limits that were already there when you came into existence.
Then came the people you met. Some you sought out; others simply entered your life. Some believed in you, some rejected you, some opened doors, and others moved on without ever realizing how much their decisions would affect your path. There were also things that never happened: the accident that did not occur, the illness that did not appear, the crisis that did not interrupt everything.
You do not remember these absences. You remember what you did: the effort, the difficult nights, the choices, the risks, the sacrifices. And when you look back, these are the things that occupy the center of the story. All the rest becomes scenery.
You were courageous, disciplined, persistent, and brilliant. But was all of that enough? Or were you simply lucky?
Read around the book
Continue the investigation.
You worked hard. But was that all?
Acknowledging luck does not erase effort. It simply prevents effort from telling, on its own, a story that was never produced by a single cause.
How many people had to choose you?
No career, business, or important project depends only on the decisions of the person at the center of the story.
You were lucky with things that never happened.
Luck is usually remembered for what happened. But there is another, much less visible form of luck.
Your life began before your choices.
Before the first decision you can remember, you already existed within conditions you had not defined.
Your effort does not explain all your success.
You know your effort from within. The other causes of an achievement rarely appear with the same clarity.
Being lucky does not erase your merit.
Acknowledging favorable circumstances does not mean denying the work, the risks, or the good decisions of someone who achieved something.
Why do some people succeed and others do not?
Winners’ stories tell us something important, but rarely everything that separated one journey from another.
Your health also helped you get this far.
The body that allowed your decisions, your work, and your plans to keep happening is also part of your journey.
You did not build everything alone.
Before any work, decision, or creation, there was already a world of knowledge, tools, and structures making action possible.
Your success also depended on the era you were born in
An ability only produces certain results when it encounters an era capable of using and valuing it.