Fortune can mean either luck, or wealth. For people who think it means luck, wealth almost never comes. To people who believe it means wealth, no luck is ever needed because they’re busy working their ass off to achieve.
In spite of great educations, good jobs, and wonderful co-workers, we all fail from time to time. When we do we often blame fortune and destiny for our fates instead of looking within and thinking, perhaps, we could have done better work. Recently this happened to me in a legal matter, and the taste was bitter. I do not choose to dwell upon failure, but to learn from it. Life is not about what failures we have, but what triumphs we achieve in spite of those failures.
To really achieve fortune in life, you need to be kind, compassionate, industrious, and understand that success is not a sign along the road, or a destination. It’s the struggle itself that becomes success. And it becomes success in large measure because we rise and fall, fail and succeed, and learn along the way.
Ben Franklin said that experience “keeps a dear school, but a fool will learn in no other.” Experience teaches that success depends as much on learning from our foolhardy adventures as from our fortunate successes.
The Well Armed Attorney 