Fortunate

There's nothing wrong with being lucky; "hard work" isn't the only means to worthwhile ends in life.

I'm not normally the sort to wish people luck. Luck, for me, is when external factors come together in ways outside of one's control to create a positive outcome. And while that can be utterly amazing, it is, more or less by definition, unreliable.

That said, there's nothing wrong with being lucky. And so I find the tendency of LinkedIn posts to downplay, or even deny, the role of luck to be curious. Especially, when the only other alternative seems to be "working hard." What happened to things like skill, vision, determination, endurance, intuition and cleverness? I'd rather work smarter than harder any day of the week, and I suspect that when people speak exclusively about how their hard work led to success, they're leaving out all of the factors (including luck) that they used to multiply that effort into the outcomes they attained. Because a lot of people work very hard on a day-to-day basis. There are very many fewer successful people than there are hard workers.

But I get it. Saying "the luckier I was, the more my hard work paid off" or "the trick is to be prepared to make the best of good fortune, if it arrives" can give the impression that success was not earned, but gifted. And the idea that success must be earned feels more "fair." But fair is where pigs go to win prizes (sometimes, with the help of remarkably literate spiders); it's not a governing principle of the Universe.

That said, I still plan to wish people skill, wisdom and knowledge, rather than luck. Because these are things that people can count on; and when they can't, they can always improve them. But if it turns out that the stars have aligned, and dropped something incredible into their laps, I will still celebrate their good fortune with them. (But they're picking up the tab.)