Feeling Lucky?

I’ve been thinking about luck lately, and not because it’s St. Patrick’s Day.

In my Econ class, we were discussing a research paper that involved high school dropouts. Someone jokingly referred to them as “druggies”, and soon my class of mostly upper-middle class, privileged college students was calling them “lazy” and “stupid”.

My friend then wrote this in her notes: “I would call them unlucky.”

And as we read the paper, it struck me how right she was. How many of us grew up not knowing who our dad was? What’s the likelihood that someone in your family will get beaten or stabbed in the next six months? For the dropouts in this study, the probabilities were shockingly high. 

I find myself guilty of justifying my successes and opportunities as only a result of my hard work, when really a lot of it was just luck, or rather a blessing. A blessing that I was born in this country, into a stable family who loves and supports me, a blessing I am no more deserving of than anyone else.

I came across this fantastic speech given at Princeton’s graduation last year:

Princeton Graduation Speech 2012

(For whatever reason, I couldn't embed it, but trust me: it's worth the 10 minutes.)

He talks about how professional baseball teams have been judging players’ abilities based on factors over which they often had little control, thus arbitrarily placing greater value on certain players over others, who may have been more qualified. From the speech:

"Forget baseball, forget sports. Here you had these corporate employess, paid millions of dollars a year. ... And yet they were misvalued--because the wider world was blind to their luck. ... And you have to ask: if a professional athlete paid millions of dollars can be misvalued, who can't be?"

When we see success, either in our lives or in others', I hope we never forget that the world is no judge of value. High GPAs, loads of money, prestigious awards can never tell you how smart or hardworking or valuable someone is. Only God knows how much we are worth, and He seems to think each and every one of us is pretty valuable, with complete disregard to our perceived worldly success or failures.

"Remember the worth of souls is great in the sight of God," (D&C 18:10).