The Anatomy of Luck

Sometimes we consider too much the good luck of The early bird and not enough the bad luck of The early worm.

A groupq of elites gathered
to say what they think
about luck,
The president first spoke
And he said,
"Everything in life is luck."
But he is corrected by Seneca
who said,
"Luck is what happens when
preparation meets opportunity."

"Luck is a dividend of sweat.
The more you sweat,
the luckier you get,"
Said Ray Kidadl
"That's so true,"
Agreed a scholar.
"Diligence is the mother of good luck.”
"But why do shallow men believe in luck?
Asked Ralph Waldo
"Because they are shallow,"
said the scholar.
"Strong men believe in cause and effect,”
Said Ralph Waldo.
"Because shallow men believe
in shallow things,"
Repeated the scholar.

“No wonder. Luck has a way of
evaporating when you
lean on it.”
Said Brandon Mull.
"Hence you don't believe in things
so windy and unreliable,"
Said Albert Einstein.
"I never knew all that,"
Said Jeremiah Carlton,
"You all are so wise
because you are all lucky."

"Luck never made a man wise,"
Seneca said to him.
"Being wise makes men lucky."
“But we must believe in luck,"
Said Jean Cocteau,
"For how else can we explain the success of those we don’t like?”
"Or how else can we console
ourselves of our own failures?"
Said King Solomon.

"Yes people always call it luck
when you’ve acted more sensibly
than they have,”
Said Anne Tyler.
q
"But we must believe in luck,"
Said Jean Cocteau again.
"For those who don’t believe in magic shall never find it."
Said Ronald Dahl.
“And I'm a greater believer in luck,”
Said Thomas Jefferson,
"and I find the harder I work
the more of it I have.”

"Then how is it lucky to have luck?"
Asked Jeremiah Carlton.
"It is not lucky to have luck
except you visualize things
the other way."
Said Albert Einstein.
“By visualizing luck as
believing you’re lucky."
Said Tennessee Williams.

"So how is it lucky to have luck?"
Asked Jeremiah Carlton again
“By visualizing luck as
believing you’re lucky,"
said Tennessee Williams.
"By visualizing that good luck
is another name for tenacity
of purpose,"
said Ralph Waldo Emerson.
"By visualizing that it's
in fact hard to
detect good luck,"
said Frank A. Clark,
"It looks much like
something you've earned."
"And then by understanding
that luck always seem to belong to
someone else,"
said Q Levien.

“Remember that sometimes
not getting what you want
is a wonderful stroke of luck,”
said Lama XIV
“Yes, I sometimes think we consider too much
the good luck of The early bird
and not enough the bad luck of The early worm,”Q
said Franklin D. Roosevelt.
"It's true. What worked for me
won't work for you,"
Said Barrack Obama.
"Don't come to the barracks because I came,"
Said Adolph Hitler.
"You do not know if I'm a soldier on muftis
or a killer,"
Said Dillard Johnson.
“Certainly you never know what worse luck
your bad luck has saved you from.”
Said Cormac McCarthy.
"That's why it's sometimes okay to give up
while still alive than
drawn trying to swim,"
Said Jeremiah Carlton.
"And that's false Jeremiah Carlton,"
Said Dewayne Johnson.
Q
"Luck is a dividend of sweat,"
Said Ray Kroc,
"the more you sweat,
the luckier you get."
"It doesn't happen otherwise
as people believe,"
said John Cena .
"Luck is what you have leftover
after you give 100 percent,”
said Coleman Langston

© Godwin Isiwu

Author's Note

Luck could simply be a concept used to describe what one had earned out of his hard-work, or it could be a miracle that happens by accident or providence. But different characters in the poem clearly stated their unique meanings of luck and all of them agreed that luck is what one earned as a result of hard work, but Jeremiah Carlton, who always seemed eager to find out a way to justify his laziness or misfortune by believing in luck thinks otherwise. In stanza 3, he blamed luck for not being as intelligent as the other characters in the poem and in the last stanza he suggested it is sometimes okay to give up when luck runs out of one. The rest of the characters holds rigidly against the Carlton’s ideas. Meanwhile, already, in the first stanza, the president had summarized that everything in life is luck, crediting both the views of Jeremiah Carlton and that of the rest of the characters in the poem; in other words, luck could come as a free gift of nature or as a reward for one’s hard work.