Fortune's Favor
On fortune's gaze and the smooth flow of life
Each month, we tackle a different theme on how to live what the ancients called the “good life.” For the month of January, we’ve been focusing on the theme of FATE. Feel free to review our previous Monday Meditations, Wednesday Wisdoms, and Friday Sweet Bites to catch up.
This Week at a Glance:
Our theme for the month of January is FATE and so far we’ve looked at fate and our role within it from the perspective of learning to let go of the past and self-discipline.
This week, we’re looking at how we can best navigate the waves of fortune and live a “smooth flow of life” when she arrives.
By the time you finish this meditation, you’ll learn:
🍭 How to be prepared for fortune’s arrival;
🍬 Learn to accept fortune’s gifts;
🍫 Allow fortune to help guide your character.
Let’s dive in.
One of the oldest concepts in the pursuit of the “good life” is that of fortune. In ancient times, fortune was depicted as a goddess known Fortuna. Often displayed blindfolded and with a ship's rudder, she was known to provide either good or bad luck to individuals.
Her legacy became more popular and persisted throughout the Renaissance, however, thanks to the The Consolations of Philosophy written by Boethius around 524 AD. In one passage he would write:
“You are wrong if you think Fortune has changed towards you. Change is her normal behavior, her true nature. In the very act of changing she has preserved her own particular kind of constancy toward you.”1
Nowadays we discuss people being fortunate, but don’t think of fortune in the same way as the ancients did. Fortune and fate are mostly discussed in the debate between free will and determinism. From an extremely simplified view, the free will camp believes we have agency over our actions. The determinists, however, view the world from a predetermined stance, seeing life playing out through cause and effect, and therefore, removing free will from the equation.
The terms fortune, chance, and luck tend to be interchangeable nowadays but for ease of this article, I am defining them as follows:
Fortune is about things outside of our control—it is the universe, through a series of events, presenting certain situations to us;
Chance allows for us to have some control over, it allows for us to play a role in the outcome;
Luck is when chance succeeds in our favor.
Our happiness, fulfillment, and life perspective is directly impacted by the way we view the world and how we associate ourselves to fortune’s gaze. In order to best capture fortune and use it to our advantage, this week we look into four tactics to help embrace its opportunities and pave our fate.
The Art of Running Down Hill
In his book Greenlights, Matthew McConaughey talks about the art of running downhill—the ability to keep our footing when fortune strikes and keep that momentum moving.
If you’ve ever run down a hill, you know how hard it can be to not only keep a steady momentum but also not trip and fall—the additional speed, the weight pushing down, the struggle to keep your footing step-after-step.
Handling fortune’s gaze requires we approach life with the same vigor and poise. We maintain our grip on fortune by properly preparing for it as best as we can. We can’t prepare when fortune strikes, we must be prepared ahead of time.
Once fortune does arrive, we keep the momentum going by continually reflecting upon what lead to fortune’s favor, what is working, and by avoiding complacency.
As the scientist Louis Pasteur once wrote:
“Fortune favors the prepared mind.”2
We must be prepared for when opportunity strikes, not wait to act until it does. If we do, we’ll never be prepared enough to ride fortune’s full wave.
Plan with Diligence, Embrace with Gratitude
While we need to constantly be prepared for if and when fortune lays her gaze upon us, we need to accept her luck with gratitude.
She will not always present herself to us. We can only plan for fortune’s arrival as best as we can. But if she does not arrive, we need to learn to accept and release.
Marcus Aurelius, reminding himself of how we better prepare ourselves for dealing with fortune’s fate, wrote:
“I was once a fortunate man but at some point fortune abandoned me.
But true good fortune is what you make for yourself. Good fortune: good character, good intentions, and good actions.”3
Only by learning how to lean into ourselves, lean into building good character through good actions, does true fortune come our way. Even if fortune does not lay her gaze upon us, we are still fortunate.
Embracing the Challenge
Marcus Aurelius reminded himself that the obstacle that stands in our way becomes our way4—that we have the ability to maximize our exposure to challenges and to learn from them.
Once we encounter an obstacle, we’re no longer the same, we’ve shifted in a sense. It is up to us to decide how we’ve shifted, are we going to grow from the experience or stay the same?
What many get wrong about challenges we face is that they assume it forces us into a win-lose scenario. ‘Did I win the scenario and succeed? Did I lose?’
But life is not always about winning and losing. In fact, the majority of life is not placed into win-loss columns but rather are challenges waiting to be accepted.
It’s about having the courage to enter the arena to begin with.
You may not win this round or even the next, but you accept the challenge, gain the experience, and receive wisdom for future reference.
The philosopher Michel de Montaigne understood this when he wrote:
“The role played by constancy consists chiefly in patiently bearing misfortunes for which there is no remedy.”5
Whether it is a misfortune faced or a challenge, the consistent courage to step up to the bat and take on the challenge is what matters most.
If happiness is a smooth flow of life6, as Zeno stated, then smoothness comes from consistently accepting challenges faced.
Fortune is there, it need just be seen. As the philosopher Francis Bacon stated:
“If a man look sharply, and attentively, he shall see Fortune: for she be blind, yet she is not invisible.”7
Accept with Indifference
"Fortune always will confer an aura of worth, unworthily, and in this world the lucky person passes for a genius.”
Euripides, The Heracleidae
When fortune places her gaze upon us, we need to ground ourselves in the reality that we are not the one’s fully in control of her powers. We must learn to accept the gifts she give, if she so choose to give them, and allow them to go if they quickly vanish.
Some things we have control over, but others we do not. When fortune chooses to look upon us, we shouldn’t believe some narrative that it was all our doing. The world is filled with so many variables that rarely is it possible for us to control all outcomes.
When dealing with fortune, there is no greater power than modesty to allow for truth to pierce the veil of “genius” and allow for humility to guide our future.
3-Bullet Summary:
Fortune can strike at any time and we must be prepared for its arrival;
True fortune is from within us and our character, not an external;
Our actions build our destiny and allow fortune in.
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Until next week,
D.A. DiGerolamo
Boethius, The Consolations of Philosophy
Louis Pasteur, taken from The Biggest Bluff by Maria Konnikova
Marcus Aurelius, Mediations 5.37
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 8.35
Michel de Montaigne, The Essays
Zeno, Stobaeus ii.7
Francis Bacon, Essays
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