The Law of Attraction Is a Fairy Tale: Luck, Murphy’s Law, and the Darts We Keep Throwing

Success Doesn’t Depend on Us Alone

There’s an entire industry promising to change our lives by changing the way we think. All we have to do is stay positive, visualize our goals, believe deeply in our dreams, and sooner or later the universe will reward us. If success never comes, the problem must be us: we didn’t believe hard enough, we didn’t develop the right mindset, we attracted negative energy. It’s a convenient explanation, especially for people selling happiness courses and self-help books about getting rich.

Too bad reality is far less accommodating. We can be optimistic, determined, well-prepared, and even talented without getting what we want. We can do everything reasonably well and still end up on the wrong side of luck. Because beyond our abilities and decisions, there are other people, circumstances, and chance. And they don’t always work in our favor.

Success isn’t simply a matter of individual merit, just as failure isn’t necessarily the result of some personal shortcoming. Sometimes, behind the story of someone who made it, there’s also a healthy dose of dumb luck. Acknowledging that doesn’t diminish the value of hard work. It simply means we should stop telling ourselves fairy tales.

The Elevator, the Publishing Executive, and the Luck That Changes Everything

Imagine a writer who, through sheer coincidence, gets trapped in an elevator with a powerful executive from a major publishing house. An ordinary, even absurd situation that could turn into the opportunity of a lifetime: a few words exchanged to pass the time, an unexpected conversation, a connection that would have been almost impossible to make under normal circumstances.

It’s an image that calls to mind a famous scene from the Italian film Thus Spoke Bellavista (Così parlò Bellavista), in which a broken elevator forces Professor Bellavista and an executive named Cazzaniga to confront each other, setting off an unexpected chain of events. The cinematic scene shouldn’t be confused with the story of an actual encounter involving a publishing executive, but it captures perfectly how a chance situation can transform relationships between people.

How many people have needed to meet the right person to change the course of their lives, yet never had the opportunity?

Luck rarely arrives in the form of a winning lottery ticket. More often, it shows up as information received at just the right moment, an unexpected phone call, a chance acquaintance, or a door that opens almost by accident.

It happened to me, too. One morning, I went out for coffee with a friend and learned during our conversation that a job selection process was underway. An entirely ordinary circumstance that might never have occurred. If I had stayed home, if I hadn’t met that friend that day, or if we had talked about something else, I might never have received that information.

Of course, learning about a job opening isn’t the same as getting the job. You still have to recognize the opportunity, pursue it, and hopefully make the most of it. But without that information, I might never even have taken the first step.

That’s the point: merit can help us seize an opportunity, but it can’t always make the opportunity appear in the first place. We can prepare for years without meeting the right person, while someone else might simply find themselves in the right elevator.

Recognizing this should make us less arrogant when we succeed and less judgmental when others don’t.

Bad Luck Isn’t a Life Lesson

A business opens just before a lockdown and is devastated by a crisis that no business plan could have fully anticipated. A candidate misses out on a competitive exam by a fraction of a point after years of studying. Someone is involved in an accident because a truck blows a tire. A man or woman longs for a lasting relationship, tries to meet someone to share life with, and ends up single.

What should they have done? Thought more positively? Visualized their future more clearly? Believed more intensely in their dreams?

Sometimes bad luck carries no hidden lesson. It’s simply bad luck. Insisting that every misfortune must have a deeper meaning can become a cruel way of blaming victims for circumstances they never caused.

Not every failure can be avoided. Not every dream comes true. Not everyone finds the love, job, or opportunity they want. And not every closed door proves we took the wrong path.

Some people work hard without getting results. Others receive decisive help. Still others face obstacles far greater than those encountered by their peers. Reducing these differences to individual willpower means ignoring an essential part of reality.

Success requires ability, effort, and perseverance, but it can also depend on favorable circumstances, relationships, family background, historical timing, and chance encounters. Sometimes these factors combine. Other times, a single one can radically change the outcome.

The problem isn’t admitting that luck exists. The problem is turning our own good fortune into proof of our moral superiority.

Murphy’s Law Is Always Lurking

If the Law of Attraction encourages us to imagine that the world can respond to our wishes, Murphy’s Law reminds us, with a dose of irony, that things can go wrong precisely when we least expect them to.

It isn’t a scientific law claiming that everything must inevitably end badly. It’s a useful reminder of how fragile our plans can be. Unexpected events happen, there are countless variables we can’t control, and even the best strategies can fail.

That’s why I believe taking precautions is essential. We can’t prevent every disaster, but we can often reduce the likelihood of one occurring or limit the damage it causes.

Someone starting a business can build financial reserves and avoid relying on a single customer. Someone looking for work can prepare for a job interview or competitive selection process while continuing to explore other options. Someone seeking a relationship can create opportunities to meet people without putting their entire life on hold while waiting for a soulmate. Anyone facing an important decision can consider the worst-case scenarios instead of imagining only the best possible outcome.

There are no absolute guarantees. A carefully managed business can still fail, a well-prepared candidate can still be rejected, and an unexpected event can devastate even someone who has done everything reasonably possible to prevent it. Prevention isn’t omnipotence. It’s common sense.

Preparing for the possibility that something might go wrong doesn’t make us pessimists. It means we take our lives seriously.

You Can Improve Your Odds, but You Can’t Command Luck

There’s an opposite danger, however: moving from faith in positive thinking to the belief that everything is random and therefore making an effort is pointless.

That would be another mistake.

We can’t schedule good luck, but we can create conditions that make it more likely to find us. If we never leave the house, we reduce our chances of meeting people. If we don’t cultivate relationships, we’re less likely to hear about an opportunity through someone we know. If we stop learning, we may not be ready when an opportunity presents itself. If we never try, we also deprive ourselves of the chances that might have worked out.

The universe doesn’t reward us simply because we think the right way. Our actions change the range of possibilities available to us, at least to some extent.

That distinction matters. We can’t control the outcome, but we can influence the odds. We can take action without pretending to be omnipotent, prepare without expecting to eliminate every risk, and persevere without turning persistence into an obsession.

We can also recognize when it’s time to change strategies. Perseverance doesn’t mean repeating the same action forever. It means continuing to look for workable paths, learning from mistakes, and adapting to circumstances.

Marcus Aurelius’s Darts and the Right to Keep Trying

I like to imagine our attempts as darts thrown toward targets we can’t always see. We don’t know where they’ll land, whether they’ll hit the bull’s-eye or miss completely. But if we stop throwing them because we’re afraid of failure, we also eliminate the possibilities that might have surprised us.

This image fits with the Stoic distinction between what depends on us and what doesn’t. I wouldn’t present it as a literal quotation from Marcus Aurelius, but as a metaphor for the relationship between action and uncertainty.

We can exercise some control over our decisions, preparation, discipline, and responses. We can’t control other people’s decisions, historical circumstances, or every random event that interferes with our plans.

Self-doubt becomes dangerous when it leads us to stop acting. If we’re convinced that nothing we do matters, we may give up looking for work, meeting people, proposing ideas, writing, or building something of our own. Our opportunities shrink, and we end up interpreting that scarcity as proof that we were right not to try.

In doing so, we risk sabotaging the very luck we hoped to encounter.

This doesn’t mean every dart will eventually hit a target. Life owes us no reward for perseverance. Some people try for years without achieving the results they want. But continuing to try keeps possibilities open that giving up would close permanently.

And there’s another reason to keep going: the satisfaction of knowing we made an effort, even when the outcome wasn’t what we hoped for.

My Blog and the Satisfaction of Showing Up

I publish regularly on my blog. I can’t know how many people will read an article, which idea will attract attention, which piece will be shared, or whether a post might eventually connect me with someone who opens up a new path.

Every article is a dart thrown into the world. It might go unnoticed, or it might reach someone I never imagined would read it. I can’t plan that outcome, but I can make the possibility of it happening real.

Yet the value of this activity goes beyond the results. Writing allows me to develop ideas, explore issues, test my convictions, and give shape to my thoughts. It gives me a reason to keep learning and to avoid becoming a mere spectator of the world around me.

There’s a kind of satisfaction that doesn’t depend on the number of readers or the success of any individual article. It comes from doing something I believe in, day after day.

I don’t need to be certain that every post will bring me good luck. It’s enough to know that publishing keeps a possibility alive while giving value to the present.

We don’t have to convince ourselves that we’ll win in order to find a reason to participate. We can find a reason to participate even when we have no guarantee of winning.

Success Also Depends on How We Respond

The way we deal with bad luck can make a difference, but here, too, we should avoid turning a reasonable observation into another form of moral judgment.

People don’t all respond in the same way. Personal resources, support from others, and the severity of what happened can dramatically affect what someone is able to do. Some people bounce back quickly; others need time. Some find a new path, while others can’t recover what they’ve lost.

We shouldn’t expect every tragedy to make us stronger, nor should we blame people who are suffering for not being resilient enough. Sometimes the most important achievement is simply getting through a difficult period.

But when we have the opportunity, we can try not to let a setback determine the rest of our lives. We can ask for help, change direction, protect what remains, and try again.

The difference isn’t that some people are immune to bad luck. It’s that they try to preserve some room to maneuver within circumstances they never chose.

We Don’t Control Our Destiny, but We Can Do Our Part

Perhaps wisdom lies in holding three truths together.

First, not everything depends on us, and merit alone cannot explain every success or every failure.

Second, we can’t eliminate uncertainty, but we can take precautions, build alternatives, and reduce certain risks.

Third, we don’t need to believe the world will reward our efforts in order to keep doing what we consider meaningful.

The Law of Attraction promises a degree of control we simply don’t possess. Fatalism, by contrast, encourages us to give up the control we actually do have. Between these two illusions lies a more realistic approach: act, prepare, try, adjust, and accept that part of the outcome will remain beyond our control.

We don’t own our destiny, but neither are we obliged to surrender all our possibilities to it in advance.

Let’s keep throwing our darts. Not because the universe owes us a reward, but because trying has value even when we don’t win. And let’s take every reasonable precaution, because we can improve our odds of getting lucky and sometimes limit the damage caused by bad luck.

The real question isn’t whether positive thinking can guarantee us a happy life. It’s whether we’re willing to do our part without demanding guarantees, recognize good fortune when it smiles on us, and refuse to feel ashamed when, despite everything, it turns its back on us.

Changing Your Mind, Changing Your Life, Changing Masters

Change is one of the most natural things we do and, at the same time, one of the hardest things to accept. We are willing to acknowledge that the world is constantly changing, but when the change involves us or someone we know well, we suddenly demand explanations, consistency, and justification. As if there were an age beyond which we were no longer allowed to become different.

And yet no one reaches the end of their life as exactly the same person they were at the beginning.

We change our minds, our habits, and our desires. We change the way we look at other people and, sometimes, the way we look at ourselves. There are beliefs that stay with us for decades and then, almost without our noticing, stop belonging to us. Others withstand everything and become such a deep part of who we are that questioning them seems almost impossible.

Change can be slow or sudden. It can grow out of years of reflection or emerge from an event that, in a matter of hours, calls into question something we had always taken for granted.

Someone may quit smoking after coming face-to-face with the possibility of death. Someone else may decide to lose weight after years of unhealthy eating, finally realizing that the body cannot be treated as though time had no consequences. Someone may leave a job where they spent half their life, move to another city, end a relationship, or start over.

From the outside, all of this can look like sudden transformation. But almost every important change has a long history that other people cannot see. There are thoughts that mature quietly, frustrations that accumulate, questions that remain unanswered for years. Then something happens: an illness, a meeting, a loss, a birth, a failure, a crisis. That event does not necessarily create the change. Sometimes it simply opens a door that was already there.

Changing Your Mind

Changing your mind should not automatically be seen as a sign of weakness. It would be strange to expect someone who has learned something new to continue thinking exactly as they did before simply to avoid appearing inconsistent.

Consistency is an important quality, but it can become a cage when it is confused with immobility. If ten years ago we had less information, less experience, and less awareness, why should we consider it a betrayal when we see certain things differently today?

Of course, not every change of opinion comes from greater awareness. We may change our minds out of fear, pressure, conformity, or self-interest. We may even change our minds without truly having one of our own, simply following someone else's.

But that does not mean changing is wrong. It simply means that we should ask ourselves why we changed.

Changing Your Life

A different kind of change is the one that concerns our entire existence.

There are people who eventually decide that they no longer want to live the way they have lived until that point. Not necessarily because their life has been a failure, but because they have discovered that it no longer reflects the person they have become.

A religious conversion can radically transform someone's life. Someone else may take the opposite path and leave behind the faith in which they were raised. One person may choose a simpler life after spending years pursuing success. Another may finally find the courage to pursue a desire they had sacrificed for too long.

In such cases, change cannot be measured only by the advantages it brings. Sometimes changing means losing something. That may be one of the most revealing differences between an authentic transformation and a simple adaptation to circumstances. Change does not always bring an immediate reward. Sometimes it comes with a price: giving up security, disappointing someone, or starting over from a position worse than the one from which we began. And yet the person who changes may still feel that they are finally moving in the right direction.

And Then There Are Politicians

Here, things become more complicated.

A politician can change their mind. They can admit they were wrong. They can revise their beliefs after gaining a deeper understanding of an issue, after studying it, governing, or listening to different people. Politicians are human beings too, and there is no reason they should be condemned to believe at fifty what they believed at twenty.

But politics introduces something that makes change much harder to interpret: self-interest.

A politician who changes parties, alliances, or positions may have genuinely changed their beliefs. Or they may simply have changed the place where those beliefs allow them to gain more support, more power, or a better position.

That is where suspicion begins, and it is not necessarily an unreasonable suspicion. Citizens cannot see inside other people's minds. They can only observe what people do, what they said before, and what they say afterward.

That is why political changes are often subjected to a level of scrutiny that we do not apply to changes in private life. If someone decides to quit smoking, we rarely ask what advantage they gained from the decision. If someone changes religions, we may not understand their reasons, but we recognize that those reasons belong to their most intimate sphere.

When a politician changes position precisely as the balance of power changes, however, it is reasonable to ask whether their convictions have changed—or simply their interests.

That is where the third change in the title comes in: changing masters.

It is not necessarily the same thing as changing your mind.

We Are Not Photographs

Perhaps the problem begins with our need to turn other people into photographs.

We like to know who they are, what they believe, and where they stand. A photograph reassures us because it allows us to classify. The problem is that people are not photographs. They are processes.

The person we were as a child is not the same person we became as an adult. The parent we were when our children were born is not necessarily the same parent we are today. The man or woman who made a particular choice twenty years ago had different experiences, fears, and knowledge from those they possess today.

Expecting that person to remain unchanged is, in a way, denying them the right to grow.

But there is an opposite danger as well: using the word "change" to justify everything. Not everything that changes is progress. Not every new position is more truthful than the previous one. Not every break is liberation, and not every transformation automatically deserves admiration.

Change can be a salvation, but it can also be an escape. It can be growth, but it can also be opportunism. It can mean finally finding yourself, or simply finding a place that suits you better.

Looking Without Rushing to Judge

Perhaps we should learn to observe change more carefully and be less eager to pass judgment. We can ask what produced it, what it required, what it cost, and what it brought in return. Above all, we can ask whether the person has become freer or merely more convenient to themselves.

We will not always find an answer. Some changes remain mysterious even to the people experiencing them. Sometimes we understand only years later why we abandoned one path and chose another.

Perhaps this is one of the strangest things about existence: while we are living it, we do not yet know the ultimate meaning of our choices. We discover it only by looking back.

We change our minds, we change our lives, and sometimes we change masters. And after changing everything, we may discover that we have simply found our way back to ourselves.

Perhaps changing does not always mean becoming someone else. Sometimes it means finally becoming the person we had not yet found the courage to be. 

Making Peace with Your Shadow

Pain, at least to a great extent, is self-inflicted. Not in the simplistic sense that we are always the architects of our own suffering, because life contains illness, grief, injustice, betrayal, accidents, and circumstances we never chose and that can strike us without warning. Pain becomes self-inflicted when, on top of the original wound, we build a second layer of suffering around it: relentless self-judgment, remorse, recrimination, and the obsessive question of what we could have done differently.

This is where the past becomes a prison.

Our choices, in fact, never emerge from nowhere. They are the product of the trajectory that came before them. Our beliefs, our fears, the way we interpret the world, what we consider possible or impossible, the people we trust and those we distrust, even the way we imagine our future—all of these are the result of a long accumulation of experiences. Whenever we make a choice, we carry this invisible inheritance with us.

That is why every life is truly unique and unrepeatable. Even the lives of identical twins, who may be nearly indistinguishable in appearance and share the same genetic makeup, will never be exactly the same life. All it would take is for one of them to meet someone the other never met, for one to receive a job offer the other never received, or for one to be in a particular room when something decisive happens while the other is somewhere else. From that moment on, their trajectories would slowly begin to diverge.

The family we are born into is already a first lottery. So is geography. So is historical time. Even the moment of our birth matters. A child born into a financially secure and culturally stimulating family starts from a different position than one born into poverty, conflict, or a broken home. A young person born in a major city will encounter different opportunities and people from someone born in a small town. Someone entering the workforce during a period of economic expansion encounters possibilities that are different from those available to someone turning twenty during a recession.

And then there are the people we meet.

A person we encounter by chance can change an entire life. A teacher can convince us that we are capable of doing something we had never imagined. A friend can take us somewhere where we meet the person who will become our spouse. A colleague can introduce us to someone who offers us the job of our life. But the opposite is also true: we can meet the wrong person at the wrong time and spend years trying to escape the consequences of that encounter.

How much of all this can we really control?

And yet, when we reach fifty and look back, we tend to tell ourselves the story of our lives as though we had once possessed a complete map. As though every crossroads had been clearly marked. As though we had known that a particular phone call would matter, that a certain person would betray us, that a company would fail, that a relationship would end, that an opportunity would never come again.

But we didn't know.

And this is precisely where what economists and decision theorists call bounded rationality comes into play: human beings make decisions based on the information available to them, their cognitive abilities, the time they have, and the emotional context in which they find themselves. We do not possess perfect knowledge of the future. We are not omniscient. We cannot calculate every consequence of every decision.

Every choice, therefore, is made inside a cone of shadow.

And regret often begins when we forget that.

Imagine a twenty-five-year-old man who turns down an opportunity to move abroad because he wants to stay close to his family. At fifty, he looks back at his life and discovers that the foreign company he turned down has become a multinational corporation, while the colleagues who left have built extraordinary careers. He might tell himself: “I was an idiot. If I had left, I would have a house abroad, more money, and a completely different career.”

But there is a trick hidden inside that reasoning.

The twenty-five-year-old did not know the future of the company. He did not know it would become a multinational. He did not know that some of his colleagues would succeed. He did not even know whether he himself would succeed. All he knew was that, at that moment, he had a family he was deeply attached to and that leaving seemed like too great a risk.

The fifty-year-old is judging his twenty-five-year-old self using information that the younger man could not possibly have possessed.

It is a profoundly unfair process.

The same thing happens in romantic relationships. How many people, after a marriage or relationship ends, torment themselves by saying, “I should have realized sooner who that person really was”? But how could they have? At the beginning of a relationship, we never completely know another person. We know what the other person shows us and what we are capable of seeing. Some behaviors are interpreted differently because we are in love, because we trust, because we need the relationship to work.

Then something happens.

A sentence, a betrayal, a decision, a sudden change in behavior illuminates, in retrospect, even episodes that had previously seemed insignificant.

“It was all obvious.”

No. Often it wasn't obvious at all. It became obvious afterward.

That difference is enormous.

The same applies to career decisions. We may remain for years in a place that is slowly consuming us and later blame ourselves for not having had the courage to leave sooner. But perhaps ten years earlier we had two young children, a mortgage, financial insecurity, and no concrete alternative. What looks like cowardice today may, from that person's perspective at the time, have been a form of responsibility.

This does not mean it was necessarily the best choice. It simply means that we should judge it by considering the information, constraints, and responsibilities that existed at that particular moment.

The same is true of missed opportunities.

How many times do we tell ourselves, “I should have tried”?

I should have written that book. I should have confessed my feelings. I should have taken that job. I should have moved away. I should have studied harder. I should have started that business. I should have returned that phone call. I should have said yes.

Maybe.

But every “I should have” conceals a question we rarely ask ourselves: What did I know then?

Because the decision was not made by the person we are today. It was made by the person we were back then, with his fears, his beliefs, his inexperience, and his needs.

This is why regret can become a sophisticated form of retrospective narcissism: we imagine that our past self should have been smarter, braver, more farsighted, and stronger than it was actually possible for him to be.

We demand from ourselves a better version of who we were, as though that version had always been available.

It wasn't.

This, however, does not mean that every behavior should be forgiven or relativized. There is a fundamental difference between understanding a choice and justifying it.

There are actions that can be recognized as morally wrong even before we know their outcome. Deliberately harming an innocent person, knowingly betraying someone who trusts us, exploiting another person's vulnerability, torturing, persecuting, or killing for personal gain do not become good actions simply because we later find an explanation for them.

The complexity of circumstances does not erase responsibility.

The same applies to collective actions.

A government may order its soldiers to kill people it considers enemies and may call that action “necessary,” “legitimate,” “patriotic,” or “defensive.” But changing the name of an act does not automatically change its moral nature. Political and legal responsibility can be complex; propaganda can construct competing narratives; the reasons put forward by the opposing sides may be radically different. But the fact that an action has been authorized by an authority does not mean that every individual act committed within it is morally innocent.

So this is not about saying that “everything is relative.”

It is about making distinctions.

There are mistakes we make because we did not know the future. There are mistakes we make because we misjudged a situation. There are mistakes made under pressure. There are mistakes made out of fear. And there are actions we know are wrong and choose to commit anyway.

Putting everything into the same category means giving up on understanding human responsibility.

Perhaps we should also begin to look at our wounds differently.

A wound is an opening through which pain enters, but it can also become a slit, a narrow opening through which we can glimpse what might have been.

The word “slit” seems particularly appropriate to me because the past always contains an alternative possibility. A life is not only what happened; it is also the sum of everything that could have happened but never did.

We could have married someone else.

We could have lived in another city.

We could have had a different career.

We could have had more children—or none.

We could have made more money.

We could have written that book.

We could have said those words.

We could have remained silent.

We could have left.

We could have stayed.

Every real life is surrounded by an enormous constellation of possible lives that never became real.

And that is precisely what makes growing older so difficult.

We do not suffer only because of what we have lost. Sometimes we suffer because of the people we never became.

The doctor we never became. The writer we never had the courage to be. The entrepreneur we gave up on becoming. The person who might have lived in another city. The father we might have been. The woman or man we might have loved.

They are ghosts without bodies, and precisely because of that, they can become perfect.

Real life is full of flaws. The alternative life we imagine, on the other hand, never had the chance to fail.

It is a life constructed with hindsight.

Perhaps that is why regret can be so cruel: we compare a real life, full of mistakes, with an imaginary life to which we have granted nothing but success.

But we have no idea how that alternative life would have turned out.

The person we did not marry might have betrayed us. The job we did not take might have destroyed us. The city we did not move to might have made us miserable. The book we never wrote might have been a failure. The investment we never made might have cost us everything.

The past we imagine is often a carefully selected past.

We remember what we might have gained and forget what we might have lost.

And perhaps there comes a moment in life when we have to stop asking the past to give back what it can no longer give.

We cannot go back.

We can only change our relationship with what happened.

Making peace with your shadow does not mean absolving yourself of everything. It means ceasing to be your own jailer.

It means being able to look at a wrong decision and say, “Yes, it was a wrong decision.”

But also: “Back then, I didn't know what I know today.”

It means looking at the person we once were without hating him because he failed to live up to the person we wished we could have been.

It means recognizing that, at certain moments, we did the best we were capable of doing, while at other moments we could have done better and didn't.

Both things can be true at the same time.

Perhaps maturity consists precisely in being able to hold these two truths together without turning either one into self-absolution or self-flagellation.

I was wrong.

I shouldn't have done it.

I could have done things differently.

But also:

I couldn't have known everything.

I didn't yet know what I would eventually learn.

I was a different person from the one I am today.

And finally:

I tried.

That seemingly ordinary sentence could become one of the most important sentences of our old age.

I tried.

I loved as well as I knew how to love.

I worked with the tools I had.

I raised my children with what I knew at the time.

I pursued some opportunities and let others go.

I was afraid.

I was brave.

I trusted the wrong people.

I wasted time.

I started over.

I won sometimes and lost many other times.

Not every doughnut came out with a hole.

But tormenting ourselves over the ones that came out wrong will not put them back in the oven.

And above all, it will not give back the years we spent punishing ourselves.

Perhaps this is the real danger of remorse: not the pain caused by what happened, but the transformation of the past into a permanent sentence.

A mistake can last a day, a year, even a lifetime in its consequences.

But the trial against that mistake can last even longer, because we are simultaneously the defendant, the judge, the prosecutor, and the jailer.

And so we risk spending our old age in hell not because of what we did, but because of what we continue to do to ourselves because of what we did.

Perhaps, at some point, we have to lay down our weapons.

Look at our shadow.

Recognize it.

Do not deny it.

Do not idealize it.

Simply accept that the person we once were was also us.

And then turn toward whatever stretch of road remains.

Because the past can explain our trajectory, but it does not necessarily have to become our destination.

The true act of reconciliation with ourselves, then, does not consist in saying, “I didn't do anything wrong.”

It consists in being able to say:

“I was wrong. I suffered. I learned. And now, finally, I can stop punishing myself.”

Attractions Are Proportional to Destiny

What if what we call destiny were simply the name we give to what we keep unconsciously choosing?

We are used to thinking of destiny as something outside ourselves. A mysterious force, chance, coincidence, an encounter that arrives at exactly the right moment, a door that suddenly opens or closes. When something happens that we did not plan, we often say, “It was meant to be.”

But are we really sure that destiny is only what happens to us?

Perhaps there is another possibility, one that is more unsettling and, at the same time, more interesting: part of our destiny may be shaped by our own minds before we ever become conscious of our choices.

This is where a seemingly enigmatic statement begins to make sense:

“Attractions are proportional to destiny.”

This does not necessarily mean that some supernatural force leads us toward what has been written for us. It could mean something much more human: we are attracted to what is compatible with our inner structure, and by following those attractions, we gradually build our own trajectory.

Attraction Does Not Arise in a Vacuum

When we say, “I like it,” “I’m interested,” or “I’m attracted to it,” we rarely ask ourselves why.

We can meet hundreds of people and feel inexplicably drawn to just one of them. We can have dozens of possibilities in front of us and stubbornly desire only one. We can walk into a place and immediately feel at home, or experience a sense of rejection that we cannot explain.

It is as if something inside us has already made a decision before our rational mind has even begun to debate it.

Our mind does not simply observe the world: it interprets it. And in interpreting it, it selects what appears important, desirable, dangerous, or possible.

Unconscious Postulates

We can call unconscious postulates those deep assumptions through which we organize our experience without realizing it.

“Safety comes first.”

“You can’t trust people.”

“I have to prove my worth.”

“To be loved, I have to be indispensable.”

A person can live for decades according to one of these principles without ever clearly putting it into words. Yet that principle may influence the people they choose, the opportunities they recognize, and the ones they allow to pass them by.

It is a kind of invisible grammar of existence.

The process could be summarized like this:

unconscious postulate → perception → attraction or repulsion → choice → behavior → consequence.

An isolated choice does not necessarily create a destiny. But a repeated choice becomes a habit; a collection of habits creates a way of life; and a way of life can eventually begin to look remarkably like destiny.

The Unconscious Does Not Magically Create Reality

Saying that the unconscious mind “shapes reality” does not mean that our thoughts can magically materialize whatever we desire.

We do not choose the circumstances of our birth, other people's decisions, economic crises, illness, historical events, or chance.

But we can influence the way we move through those circumstances. The unconscious directs attention, shapes expectations, influences our perception of risk, and helps determine which possibilities we consider desirable—or even possible.

The point, therefore, is not that the mind creates the world, but that the mind helps construct the personal reality we derive from the world.

Attraction as a Compass

And this is where the original statement takes on a different meaning.

Attractions are proportional to destiny.

Not because we are necessarily attracted to what destiny has already determined, but because we are often attracted to what is compatible with our inner configuration.

We may unconsciously seek what confirms our worldview, satisfies a sense of lack, or allows us to repeat a familiar pattern.

And this is one of the deepest contradictions of being human: we may be attracted not to what is good for us, but to what feels familiar.

Familiarity can be mistaken for love. Anxiety for passion. Caution for wisdom. Repetition for destiny.

Attraction, therefore, is not yet destiny.

But it can be one of the paths through which destiny is built.

From Plato to Jung

The idea that attraction reveals something about us has ancient roots.

In Plato’s Symposium, eros is presented as a longing toward something perceived as beautiful, desirable, or lacking. The object of desire therefore also tells us something about the person who desires it. We do not simply desire a person or a thing: we desire what that person or thing represents to us.

With Jung, this insight enters the territory of the unconscious. Our fascinations, projections, and attractions may be connected to psychological contents of which we are not fully aware. Even synchronicity, in his perspective, illustrates how an event can acquire particular meaning when it encounters a structure of meanings already present within us.

There is no need to assume that the universe is sending us a message. It is enough to recognize that we are not neutral observers of reality: we assign meaning to it through what we are.

Character Is Destiny

At this point, we can better understand the ancient intuition attributed to Heraclitus:

“Character is destiny.”

Character is our habitual way of being in the world. The cautious person sees dangers that the bold person does not. The insecure person looks for reassurance that the self-confident person does not consider necessary. The distrustful person interprets as a threat what someone else sees as ordinary. The ambitious person sees an opportunity where someone else sees only hard work.

Character thus becomes a filter through which we select reality.

It does not determine everything that happens to us, but it helps determine how we encounter what happens to us and which possibilities we are able to recognize.

Perhaps We Call Destiny What We Have Repeated

Here the argument becomes truly uncomfortable.

Perhaps some people have not simply had “bad luck.” Perhaps they have unconsciously repeated the same patterns: choosing similar people, avoiding the same opportunities, reacting in the same way to the same problems.

After twenty years, they look back and say:

“It was destiny.”

But perhaps it was repetition.

This does not mean that everything is under our control. Life contains chance, injustice, and circumstances we cannot control. It does mean, however, that we must consider another possibility: part of destiny is not written before us, but emerges from the choices we repeatedly make.

Freedom Begins When We See What Guides Us

If this is true, freedom is not simply the abstract ability to choose. It is the ability to recognize where our choices come from.

As long as we cannot see our unconscious postulates, we may mistake them for truth. As long as we do not recognize our patterns, we may call them character. As long as we do not understand our attractions, we may call them destiny.

The question then changes.

It is no longer simply:

“What do I want?”

It becomes:

“Why do I want this particular thing?”

And then:

“Which part of me is doing the wanting?”

And finally:

“If I changed the unconscious postulate guiding this choice, would I still want the same thing?”

Perhaps this is the true frontier of inner freedom: not always doing what we want, but understanding who it is that wants.

What If We Are Destiny?

Perhaps the most uncomfortable question is not whether destiny exists, but how much of what we call destiny has been built, day after day, by ourselves without our realizing it.

We may have spent years saying, “That’s just how it turned out,” “It wasn’t my path,” or “I wasn’t lucky.” And perhaps, to some extent, that is true. Life contains chance, injustice, and circumstances beyond our control.

But there is another possibility: that part of our lives is the consequence of what we kept choosing without knowing why we were choosing it.

Perhaps we called a fear that became a habit destiny. A wound we never understood, character. The fear of taking risks, prudence. Perhaps we mistook for love whatever confirmed an unconscious need within us.

At this point, “character is destiny” stops being merely a philosophical formula and becomes a responsibility.

Because if our character shapes what we see, what we desire, and what we choose, then changing our destiny may first require becoming conscious of what moves us.

The final question, therefore, is no longer:

“What is my destiny?”

But:

“How much of what I call destiny is the result of unconscious postulates I have never questioned?”

Perhaps we are not merely people to whom life happens.

Perhaps we are also the people who, without realizing it, keep choosing the same life.

And this is where the opening statement takes on its most unsettling meaning:

attractions are proportional to destiny not because destiny leads us toward what we desire, but because what we desire may lead us toward the destiny we will eventually call our own.

Survival Is Not Enough

I don't believe we can make survival the sole purpose of our lives. And I don't believe that living as long as possible can be the ultimate goal either.

If that had been my purpose, I probably would have lived very differently. I would have focused primarily on security, protection, and comfort. I would have avoided many difficult questions, and perhaps I would never have studied as much as I did. Above all, I would not have spent so many years trying to answer the most uncomfortable question of all:

Why are we here?

Because survival is necessary, but it is not enough.

There are millions of people in the world for whom survival is already an achievement. People who do not have enough to eat, who live through war, who have been forced from their homes, who struggle every day to give their children what others take for granted. They do not necessarily have the luxury of constantly asking what life means. Under those circumstances, survival is already a tremendous goal.

But once survival itself is no longer in question, the question comes back.

Now that I'm alive, what am I supposed to do with my life?

Because wanting to keep living is one thing. Knowing why you want to live is another.

Survival Is a Condition, Not a Direction

Making survival your only project means, in a sense, navigating by sight alone. You react to whatever happens, chase whatever demands your attention, avoid danger, look for the next small gratification, and keep postponing the fundamental question.

You can live that way for years without ever seriously asking where you are going.

And this is where I think we make a fundamental mistake: we confuse goals with purpose.

We can have a house to buy, a salary to increase, a promotion to earn, a trip to take, a body to improve, a bank account to build, a relationship to find, or a social position to achieve. All of these are legitimate goals.

But how much of what we pursue actually represents our direction in life, and how much is simply the desire of the moment?

We can spend our entire lives achieving goals without ever having had a real purpose.

Because a desire is not necessarily a purpose.

And even when we finally get what we wanted, we may discover that it was never what we were truly looking for.

The Difference Between a Goal and a Purpose

Perhaps purpose is something deeper than a destination.

A goal says: I want to get there.

Purpose says: I want to move in this direction.

The difference is not trivial. A goal can be reached and immediately lose its meaning. A purpose, on the other hand, can accompany us throughout our lives without ever being reduced to a final achievement.

I believe there is something deeper than the goals we consciously set for ourselves: a kind of underlying matrix, a fundamental premise upon which we build our existence, often without even realizing it.

It is the direction we give our lives before we formulate specific goals. It is what guides our choices even when we cannot fully explain why we make them.

We can change jobs, cities, relationships, projects, and desires. We can even change our minds about what we once thought we wanted. Yet beneath all of this, there may remain a deeper direction.

The question, then, is not simply:

“What do I want to achieve?”

It is:

“What direction am I giving my life?”

What Thinkers Have Tried to Tell Us

It is a question human beings have been asking forever.

Viktor Frankl took it to its most extreme consequences. His experience in the Nazi concentration camps led him to reflect on the relationship between suffering, inner freedom, and meaning. His fundamental insight was that human beings do not live merely by seeking pleasure or avoiding pain. We need a meaning toward which we can orient ourselves.

That does not mean that having a purpose makes life easy.

It means something more radical: even in the midst of suffering, a person can have a reason to keep moving forward.

Albert Camus, too, began with one of the most uncomfortable questions of all: what does it mean to live in a universe that does not necessarily provide us with a ready-made meaning?

His reflection on the absurd does not simply lead to resignation. On the contrary, it places human beings before the responsibility of living even when the world does not necessarily hand us an answer.

Perhaps the meaning of life is not something we discover, already packaged and waiting for us.

Perhaps, at least in part, it is something we create through the direction we choose to give our existence.

These are precisely the kinds of ideas that have always interested me—not because they can give us a definitive formula, but because they prevent us from settling for the easiest answer.

You are alive because you are still alive.

But that is not an answer.

It is merely a fact.

The False Goals I Gave Myself

I can see this when I look back at my own life.

For years, I gave myself goals that I now recognize as false goals—or at least as goals that belonged more to the image I had constructed of myself than to who I actually was.

The first was to become some kind of new Paulo Coelho of world literature.

I imagined myself as a writer, a thinker, an author capable of reaching millions of people through books. It was an appealing image, but today I have to be honest with myself: I did not have the drive necessary for it, and more importantly, I did not have the genuine literary inspiration that allows a writer to devote an entire life to writing.

Perhaps I wanted the image of what I could become more than I wanted the work required to become it.

My own blog has helped me see that.

I write a great deal, but what I produce no longer feels like a literary vocation in the traditional sense. I no longer feel the need to become a great writer, publish the book that conquers the world, or turn myself into a figure in literature.

Literature simply doesn't attract me that much anymore.

And admitting that does not necessarily mean I failed.

Perhaps it means I finally stopped pursuing an image of myself that never truly belonged to me.

The Political Dream

The second false goal was completely different: politics.

For a while, I imagined that a political career could allow me to escape what I call the swamp of local government and take me somewhere else—perhaps all the way to Parliament.

I had the example of Luigi Di Maio in front of me: a young man from an ordinary background, catapulted from the anonymity of an apartment building in Pomigliano d'Arco to the seats of the Italian Parliament.

The idea was powerful: escape the narrow dimensions of everyday administrative life, skip several rungs of the ladder, and arrive where, at least apparently, the great decisions are made.

But today, looking at it with greater clarity, that goal feels less and less like mine.

Italian politics no longer excites me.

Part of the reason is that I find it difficult to regard Italy as fully sovereign in the way the word sovereignty might suggest. Italy is deeply embedded in the Western alliance system and in its relationship with the United States, and that makes it difficult for me to see national politics as the place where all of the country's fundamental choices can truly be decided.

But even here, the real issue is not whether my political interpretation is right or wrong.

The real issue is that I no longer want that career the way I once did.

The Paradox of Power

Of course, there is also a very practical side of politics that can be attractive: parliamentary salaries, benefits, privileges, and above all the possibility of building a financially comfortable life that is far removed from the circumstances of many ordinary citizens.

I once knew a former member of Parliament who seemed to regard his political career almost as an investment: five years in Parliament, followed by the opportunity to enjoy his pension benefits for the rest of his life.

From that perspective, it might seem like a remarkably convenient way to live.

But there is one thing that separates me profoundly from that idea.

I am not a parasite.

I don't say that to claim moral superiority. I say it because, to me, the real issue with politics is not simply how much a politician earns.

The real issue is what he or she can actually decide.

A politician who does not truly make decisions, who does not genuinely exercise the power entrusted to him, who simply occupies a position, collects a salary, and waits for the benefits to accumulate may be acting entirely within the rules.

But from my perspective, that person is still a parasite.

Because power without the ability—or the willingness—to change reality is nothing more than a rent.

When False Goals Fall Away

Perhaps this is what I am learning.

A goal can seem enormously important for years and then suddenly lose its appeal. Not because we have become incapable of achieving it, but because we finally realize that it was never really our goal.

Sometimes what we call failure is actually liberation.

I pursued the idea of becoming a famous writer. I imagined a political career that would take me far beyond the administrative world in which I found myself.

Today, both of those images have lost much of their power over me.

And perhaps that is a good thing.

Because when false goals fall away, there is finally room to search for the real one.

But that leaves me with a question I can no longer escape.

If I take politics away and take literature away, who am I?

So Who Am I?

That question puts me face-to-face with something much more difficult than choosing a career.

I can tell myself that my purpose is to provide for my family. And that is certainly a noble purpose. I can be a good husband, a good father, care for the people I love, work, pay my bills, and try to build a peaceful old age.

But something inside me tells me that this cannot be everything.

Because even that, if reduced to its purely material dimension, could become another form of survival.

I work to support my family. I support my family to protect the well-being of the people I love. I keep working so I can eventually retire. I retire so that I can finally have time to live.

And then what?

I do not want to spend my life waiting for the moment when life will finally begin.

Perhaps the real problem is that I have spent too much time looking for a destination.

A successful book. Parliament. A position. Recognition.

Perhaps I kept asking myself where I wanted to arrive, when I should have been asking what I want to leave behind along the way.

The Blog and the Desire Not to Speak Into a Void

My blog is helping me see something I could not see before.

It has not become what I once imagined. It has not turned its author into a famous writer. It has not created the large community of readers I may have unconsciously wanted.

And yet I keep writing.

Why?

Perhaps because writing allows me to do something very simple:

to keep someone company.

A friend. Someone I know. But also a stranger who happens to come across one of my articles.

And if that person finishes reading and feels a little less alone, discovers a question they had never put into words, or simply spends ten minutes in the company of a thought that does them some good, then perhaps what I have done was not pointless.

It is not literature in the way I once imagined it.

It is not politics.

It is not power.

It is presence.

And perhaps this also explains my long-standing, often frustrated desire to have people around me.

Maybe I do not simply want followers.

Maybe I want to reach someone.

Real People on the Other Side

Of course, I mean real people.

Not the numbers in the statistics. Not automated traffic coming from China, Singapore, or anywhere else in the world.

A bot can inflate a counter, but it cannot listen to me.

I am looking for the human being on the other side.

The person who actually reads. The person who may never leave a comment, never click “like,” never write to me, and simply return to his or her life.

I will never know who that person is.

But that person will know that, for a few minutes, somewhere, someone put into words a thought that perhaps belonged to them as well.

And then perhaps I am not simply surviving.

Perhaps I am creating a small space where two lives that will never meet can still come into contact.

Is that enough?

Maybe not.

But perhaps the problem is that we have learned to consider only what is large, visible, profitable, or recognized to be meaningful.

A person in Parliament seems to have a purpose.

A bestselling writer seems to have a purpose.

A successful entrepreneur seems to have a purpose.

But why should there be less value in someone who manages simply to leave a thought in another person's mind?

What I Wish for Others

Whatever I wish for other people, I have to wish for myself first.

I cannot tell others that they need to find a purpose while I am content merely to survive.

I cannot point toward a direction if I am unwilling to search for it in my own life.

That is why this reflection is not meant to be a lesson for anyone else.

It is, first and foremost, a question I am asking myself.

What is the underlying matrix of my existence?

What fundamental premise, consciously or unconsciously, is guiding my choices?

What direction remains when I strip away all the temporary goals, the passing desires, and all the little things that seem essential today but may mean nothing tomorrow?

Perhaps that is where true purpose begins.

I Haven't Found the Answer Yet

The truth is, I still do not know what my purpose is.

And perhaps that is the most honest thing I can write.

I do not want to invent one simply because I need to feel important.

I want to find something that is true.

Something that remains after all the false images I have built of myself have fallen away.

Perhaps my purpose will not be to become somebody.

Perhaps it will be to be somebody for someone.

Perhaps I do not need to build an audience. Perhaps I simply need to reach a real person every once in a while.

Perhaps I do not need to change the world.

Perhaps I need only to leave some trace of my passing through it.

And perhaps even keeping someone company—a friend, a lonely person, a stranger who opens an article on an ordinary evening—can be a form of purpose, if we do it not to fill the emptiness inside ourselves, but because we have something authentic to share.

I still do not know whether that will be enough for me.

But I know it is far more real than the false goals I pursued in the past.

Because in the end, the question is not simply:

“How long will I manage to stay alive?”

Nor is it:

“What will I manage to achieve?”

The question is much harder:

“What makes life worth living?”

Perhaps I will never find a definitive answer.

But as long as I keep searching for one—as long as I keep questioning, writing, thinking, and perhaps keeping someone company on the other side of a screen—then maybe, at least for now, I am doing more than simply surviving.

What If You’re Not a Chicken, but an Eagle Afraid to Fly?

Some people reach middle age and suddenly realize something they would rather not admit:

They have lived far below their potential.

Not because they were stupid. Not because they lacked talent. Not because life gave them no opportunities.

Sometimes, they simply became very good at one thing:

avoiding anything that scared them.

And that habit may have started long before they were old enough to recognize it.

Anthony de Mello, the Jesuit priest and spiritual writer, used a powerful image in one of his best-known stories: an eagle raised among chickens eventually comes to believe that it is a chicken.

It is a simple metaphor. But it raises a much bigger question:

What if some people spend their entire lives mistaking conditioning for character?

When Fear Is Passed Down as Wisdom

Children need protection. Of course they do.

But there is a difference between teaching a child to be careful and teaching a child to be afraid.

“Watch out, but go ahead.”

That is caution.

“Don’t do it. Something could happen.”

That is fear.

If a child hears the second message often enough, something subtle can happen. The world stops looking like a place to discover and starts looking like a place to avoid.

Cross the street carefully.

Don’t go too far.

Don’t talk to strangers.

Don’t take chances.

Don’t fail.

Don’t embarrass yourself.

Don’t trust people.

Be careful.

Be careful.

Be careful.

Eventually, the child may not need anyone to say it anymore.

The warning has moved inside.

The Problem Isn’t Fear. It’s Avoidance.

Fear itself is not the enemy.

Everyone is afraid of something.

The real problem begins when fear becomes a strategy for living.

Avoiding something feels good in the short term. You don't fail because you never tried. You don't get rejected because you never asked. You don't get embarrassed because you never stepped forward.

You get relief.

And relief can be addictive.

The trouble is that every time you avoid something, you lose two things: the experience itself and the opportunity to discover that you might have been able to handle it.

That is how a life can become smaller without anyone noticing.

One avoided opportunity at a time.

When “I Can’t” Becomes “That’s Just Who I Am”

A child says:

“I can’t do that.”

Years later, the adult says:

“That’s just who I am.”

That sentence deserves suspicion.

Because sometimes what we call personality is simply fear that has been practiced for decades.

Maybe you aren't really incapable of speaking in public. You are inexperienced.

Maybe you aren't incapable of starting over. You are afraid of failing.

Maybe you aren't incapable of meeting new people. You have learned to avoid situations in which you might feel uncomfortable.

The distinction matters.

Because if a limitation is part of your nature, there may be little you can do about it.

But if it is a behavior you learned, you may be able to unlearn it.

A Mediocre Life Does Not Necessarily Mean a Mediocre Person

This is why I would be careful with the word mediocre.

Someone can live an ordinary, disappointing, or unfulfilled life without being an ordinary or incapable human being.

There may be intelligence that was never used.

Creativity that was never expressed.

Ambition that was never tested.

Love that was never pursued.

A different life that was never attempted.

That may be one of the saddest forms of mediocrity:

not having little inside you, but never finding out how much was there.

The Eagle That Learned to Walk

This is where de Mello’s eagle becomes such a powerful metaphor.

The eagle did not become a chicken.

It simply learned to live like one.

It learned where to walk.

What to fear.

What not to attempt.

Where it belonged.

And after enough time, it could look at the sky and honestly believe:

“That isn't for me.”

But how could it know?

It had never flown.

That is the unsettling possibility hidden inside the metaphor:

We can mistake a lack of experience for a lack of ability.

And once that belief becomes part of our identity, we may spend the rest of our lives defending a limitation that was never actually tested.

Courage Is Not a Personality Trait

We sometimes talk about courageous people as if they were born with something the rest of us didn't get.

But courage is often much less glamorous.

It can be as simple as doing the thing while your hands are shaking.

Trying again after failing.

Walking into the room even though you are afraid of being rejected.

Applying for the job.

Making the phone call.

Starting the business.

Taking the trip.

Speaking to the person you are attracted to.

Putting your work in front of other people.

And failing.

Then discovering that you survived.

That is how confidence is built—not by being protected from every difficult experience, but by discovering, through experience, that difficulty does not necessarily destroy you.

There is an old Neapolitan saying that puts this philosophy rather bluntly:

“Chi se mette appaura nun se cocca cu ’e femmene belle.”

In other words:

“If you're too scared to make a move, you don't end up in bed with beautiful women.”

Crude? Absolutely.

But beneath the humor is an uncomfortable truth.

You cannot have the rewards of courage while demanding the safety of fear.

At some point, you have to risk rejection.

The Most Dangerous Habit

The most dangerous consequence of fear is not that it makes us uncomfortable.

It is that it can become invisible.

First, you avoid one thing.

Then another.

Then another.

Eventually, you stop noticing that you are avoiding anything at all.

You simply call it your life.

And years later, you may discover something painful:

You didn't build your life around what you wanted. You built it around what you were afraid of.

That is a very different thing.

Not Every Limitation Is Real

Of course, this is not an argument that every unhappy or unsuccessful person was damaged by an overprotective childhood.

Life is far more complicated than that.

Money matters. Health matters. Family circumstances matter. Social class matters. Luck matters. Opportunities matter. Some people face obstacles that have nothing to do with fear or upbringing.

But fear can still be one of the invisible forces shaping a person's trajectory.

An upbringing dominated by fear can teach a child to ask:

“What could go wrong?”

instead of:

“What could I discover?”

And if that question becomes automatic, the range of possible lives becomes smaller.

What If the Eagle Is You?

Maybe the real question isn't whether you are an eagle or a chicken.

Maybe the question is whether you have ever been given the chance to find out.

What if some of the things you believe about yourself have never actually been tested?

What if “I'm not capable” really means “I've never tried”?

What if “That's not who I am” really means “I've been afraid for a very long time”?

And what if some of the limits you have spent your entire life respecting were never walls at all?

Maybe they were only fences.

Maybe they were built when you were a child.

Maybe someone else built them.

Maybe you learned to stay inside them.

And maybe, even now, you can still step over them.

Because the eagles that never fly are not necessarily chickens.

Sometimes they are simply eagles that were taught, very early in life, to be afraid of the sky.

When You Can’t Have Something, You Get Good at What Can Replace It

For years, I thought my mother was doing it wrong.

She would go to church, kneel down, and pray the Rosary before the evening Mass. I used to tease her about it. In my mind, she was spending too much time in church and not enough time in the sacristy.

Because I had already convinced myself that I understood how the world worked.

I had watched people get ahead because they knew the right person. I had seen opportunities go to people who weren't necessarily the most talented or deserving, but who had a connection, a recommendation, someone willing to make a call on their behalf.

So I started paying attention to the people behind the doors.

I used to quote a line attributed to Giulio Andreotti: “God doesn't vote. Priests do.”

To me, it captured something essential about life. God might listen to your prayers, but people make decisions. People vote. People choose. People recommend. People open doors.

And there are certainly people who spend more time in sacristies than in churches—not because they are looking for God, but because they are looking for people. They understand that relationships can become opportunities, that information travels through networks, and that knowing the right person can sometimes take you farther than being the right person.

I didn't think I was being cynical.

I thought I was being realistic.

For a while, I believed that getting anywhere in life meant knowing somebody. And if you didn't know anybody, you were already behind.

Today, I think I was only half right.

My mother prayed. Perhaps God really did answer her prayers. The answer simply didn't arrive in the form she expected.

And, in the end, neither did mine.

Over the years, I began to look at luck differently. Richard Wiseman's The Luck Factor made me think about something I had never really considered: the difference between chance and serendipity.

Chance puts something in your path.

Serendipity is recognizing what it is when it gets there.

That distinction has mattered in my own life.

Some of the people who helped me appeared far away from the networks I once thought were so important. There was no powerful introduction, no carefully arranged recommendation, no influential person waiting behind a door.

Sometimes I simply found the right person.

Or perhaps, without realizing it, I had put myself in a position where the right person could find me.

That changed the way I think about opportunity.

Because there is a lesson hidden inside many of the things we don't get.

When you can't have something, you become strong at its alternatives.

If you can't rely on a recommendation, you learn how to create opportunities.

If nobody can open a door for you, you learn how to knock.

If you don't inherit a powerful network, you learn how to build relationships.

If you don't have someone to introduce you to the right person, you learn how to recognize that person when you meet them.

This doesn't mean disadvantages are secretly blessings. They aren't. Some people begin life with advantages that others simply don't have. Connections matter. Money matters. Social capital matters. Pretending otherwise is just another form of naivety.

But there is another truth that is easier to miss.

What you lack can force you to develop what you otherwise might never have learned.

The person who is always introduced may never learn how to introduce themselves.

The person who always has a door opened for them may never learn how to knock.

The person who has always had a network may never discover how resourceful they can become without one.

This is not a celebration of deprivation.

It is a recognition of human adaptability.

We tend to look at what other people have and ask why we don't have it.

The more useful question is different:

What can I become precisely because I don't have it?

That question changes everything.

It turns envy into curiosity.

It turns disadvantage into a challenge.

It turns waiting into movement.

And it turns the absence of an opportunity into the search for another one.

For a long time, I was looking for a hand to pull me forward.

A recommendation.

A connection.

An important person.

Someone who knew someone.

Then life taught me something much simpler.

The hand I found most often was the one at the end of my own arm.

That doesn't mean we don't need other people. We do. Nobody builds a meaningful life entirely alone. Other people matter. Relationships matter. Chance matters. Luck matters.

But there is a profound difference between accepting help and waiting to be rescued.

The first is part of being human.

The second can become a way of life.

So if there is one thing I would tell someone who feels disadvantaged because they don't have the connections, the money, the opportunities, or the people that others seem to have, it would be this:

Don't spend your life staring at the door someone else was given a key to.

Learn to knock.

Learn to build.

Learn to move.

Learn to meet people.

Learn to recognize opportunities that don't look like opportunities at first.

And learn to use whatever you already have.

Because you may not be able to choose the cards you were dealt. But you can decide how well you play them.

Looking back, I can finally see the irony in the way I used to tease my mother.

She went to church and prayed the Rosary.

I looked toward the sacristies.

She was looking for an answer through prayer.

I was looking for one through people.

Perhaps we were both searching for a helping hand.

The difference is that I was looking for someone else's.

Life eventually taught me to look at my own.

And perhaps that is the deeper lesson.

Sometimes life doesn't give you the thing you wanted because it is trying to make you capable of something else.

Not something better.

Not something easier.

Just something that becomes yours.

When you can't have something, you get good at what can replace it.

And sometimes, after years of looking for someone else's hand, you discover that the one you needed most had been there all along—

at the end of your own arm.

The Great Lie of Self-Help: They Teach You How to Run, But Not Who Starts Ahead

For decades, someone has been telling us how to become successful.

The names change. The books change. The motivational gurus come and go. But the promise remains essentially the same:

If you work hard enough on yourself, you can change your life.

Dale Carnegie taught us how to win friends and influence people. Napoleon Hill taught us to think and grow rich. Then came the modern motivational industry: personal development programs, life coaches, seminars, neuro-linguistic programming, visualization, manifestation, positive thinking, and an entire economy built around the idea that our destiny is, at least to a large extent, in our own hands.

So we learned to set goals.

Wake up at five in the morning.

Take cold showers.

Write down our goals every day.

Stand in front of the mirror and tell ourselves that we are destined for success.

Raise our standards.

Coach ourselves.

Eliminate negative people.

Visualize the life we want.

Believe in the law of attraction.

The problem is that this may be only half the story.

Because there is a question the self-help industry rarely puts front and center:

What happens when someone works relentlessly on themselves but starts from a completely different position than the people already at the top?

Not Everyone Starts at the Same Starting Line

Imagine two people.

They have the same talent, the same ambition, and the same discipline.

One is born into a financially secure family. If they lose their job, their parents can help. If they want to start a business, the family might be able to provide seed money. If an investment goes wrong, someone can help them recover. If they want to enter a particular professional circle, they may already know someone who can introduce them to the right people.

The other person has none of that.

If they lose their job, they may not be able to pay the rent.

If they start a business and fail, they may end up deeply in debt.

If they decide to change careers at forty, there may be no family willing to finance two years of transition.

If they make the wrong decision, there may be nobody behind them to catch them.

And yet both people are given exactly the same advice:

"You need to be more courageous."

Really?

Maybe the problem isn't always a lack of courage.

Sometimes it's the amount of protection available while you're taking the risk.

The Real Privilege May Be the Ability to Take Risks

This is one of the things the self-help industry doesn't talk about nearly enough.

Taking risks is much easier when you can afford to lose.

Someone from a wealthy family can take an unpaid internship, move to another city, attend an expensive graduate program, launch a company, invest in a risky project, or walk away from a mediocre job.

Why?

Because if things go badly, there may be a safety net.

Not necessarily a conspiracy.

Not necessarily anything illegal.

Sometimes it's simply a family.

A house.

A trust fund.

A loan.

A connection.

A piece of advice.

An introduction.

An opportunity.

A second chance.

The difference can be enormous.

For someone without that network, the same mistake can have far more serious consequences.

And suddenly, the famous advice to "get out of your comfort zone" takes on a very different meaning.

For some people, leaving their comfort zone means giving up convenience.

For others, it means risking financial ruin.

The Invisible Network

The difference becomes even more significant when we look across generations.

A family that has spent decades inside the same professional or social environment accumulates something that doesn't necessarily appear on a balance sheet.

Social knowledge.

They know how certain institutions work.

They know whom to call.

They know who matters.

They understand the language of particular professional circles.

They know the unwritten rules.

They know which opportunities exist before they become widely visible.

They know which mistakes to avoid.

And, most importantly, they pass that knowledge on to their children.

This is a form of capital that doesn't necessarily get transferred through a will.

It is transferred through conversations at the dinner table.

Through the friends of one's parents.

Through the schools one attends.

Through the environments one grows up in.

Through familiarity with worlds that outsiders may not even know exist.

Call it social capital.

It can be extraordinarily powerful.

Professional Dynasties and Revolving Doors

We can see versions of this phenomenon everywhere.

Families of academics.

Families of lawyers.

Families of doctors.

Families involved in politics.

Families deeply embedded in government.

Business dynasties.

Families that seem, generation after generation, to produce people who somehow find their way into the same influential institutions and professional circles.

Of course, we shouldn't turn this observation into the simplistic claim that every child of a successful professional got their position through corruption or nepotism.

That would be both unfair and intellectually lazy.

Family advantages are real in much more ordinary ways.

Children inherit knowledge.

They inherit expectations.

They inherit cultural habits.

They grow up knowing which doors exist and how to approach them.

They learn the rules of the game long before someone else even discovers that the game is being played.

But that is precisely what makes the issue so interesting.

When family advantages become systematic, it becomes increasingly difficult to separate individual merit from the environment in which that merit was developed.

And suddenly, meritocracy becomes much more complicated than the motivational books suggest.

But That's Still Only the First Level

And here we reach the more uncomfortable part.

The family network is only the most visible layer.

Some people can rely on their parents.

Others inherit professional networks.

Others inherit wealth.

And then there are levels of access, influence, and connectivity that most people never encounter directly.

We don't need to imagine a secret room where a handful of powerful people sit around deciding everything.

Reality can be much more ordinary—and precisely because of that, much harder to see.

People who occupy the same circles tend to recognize one another, recommend one another, finance one another's ventures, exchange information, and create opportunities for one another.

Networks create more networks.

Capital creates more capital.

Prestige creates more prestige.

Connections create more connections.

And someone standing completely outside those networks can be extremely intelligent, disciplined, talented, and motivated—and still have access to a completely different set of opportunities.

The Perfect Hamster

This is where self-help becomes almost paradoxical.

It teaches individuals to become increasingly efficient competitors inside the existing system.

Work on yourself.

Become more productive.

Wake up earlier.

Work harder.

Improve your skills.

Build your personal brand.

Be resilient.

Stay positive.

Don't complain.

Don't blame others.

Keep moving.

And millions of people become incredibly good at running.

But hardly anyone stops to ask:

Where are we running?

More importantly:

Who built the track?

And perhaps the most important question of all:

Who started fifty yards ahead of us?

The danger is that personal development can become a gigantic training program in which individuals are taught to compete more effectively against one another without ever seriously examining the structure in which that competition takes place.

The hamster doesn't necessarily need to be happy.

It just needs to keep running.

The Missing Half

None of this means that self-help books are useless.

Discipline matters.

Communication skills matter.

Setting goals can be valuable.

Improving your abilities matters enormously.

Building confidence can genuinely transform a person's life.

The problem begins when these things are presented as sufficient conditions for success.

They aren't.

They are part of the equation.

The other part includes your starting conditions, wealth, education, family background, geography, relationships, institutions, opportunities, and the social networks to which you have access.

Perhaps we should start teaching that too.

Not only:

"Work on yourself."

But also:

"Build your network."

Not only:

"Raise your standards."

But also:

"Learn to recognize the structures in which you're playing."

Not only:

"Have the courage to take risks."

But also:

"Ask yourself who will catch you if you fall."

Because the greatest privilege may not simply be having more money.

It may be having the ability to fail without being destroyed by failure.

And no cold shower at five in the morning can give you that.

You can work to become the best version of yourself.

You can become more disciplined, more intelligent, more skilled, and more determined.

But intellectual honesty requires us to acknowledge something:

Personal development can make you a better player. It doesn't necessarily change the rules of the game.

And above all, not every player enters the field from the same starting point.

Maybe it's time to stop talking only about how to run faster.

And start talking about who owns the track, who controls the entrances, and who has someone waiting to pick them up when they fall.