Do you feel lucky?

Strictly speaking, lucky is not a very proper word to use. But...well...I'm not writing a grammatically correct essay here, am I? In any case, this little entry would somewhat be slightly philosophical, but I'm pretty sure it can be understood by everyone.

But first let me start with some events that occurred for the past 2 days. One, I sustained a fall and, according to the doc, some deep abrasions, due to my stupidity in rollerblading down a slope on the carpark road. A bit of a swollen wound there, but shouldn't be an issue in a week or so.

And, two, I watched the Beauty and the Geek show(on prompting from my gf), and was amazed how geeks can look so cool! Haha...makes me wonder if I can do any better. But I'm sure my gf and I will work something out.

Ok. To the subject proper. I was chatting with my friend(I honestly can't remember who it was) some days back and I was lamenting that the Cashflow game is pretty dependent on one's luck(as with any board game, since it's always an uncertainty with dices and such). And guess what? Instead of objecting to that statement and telling me we can still learn stuff from the game despite that problem, he told me it isn't a problem. In fact, to my friend, it's reality. We don't always have opportunities come along. And what the game requires us to do is to keep trying and lie low till the right opportunity strikes.

And then when "luck" is on your side, wala! One must take all action to take advantage of one's position and work quickly to advance in one's desired path and towards one's dream. On reflection, I noticed that during the game, I can accumulate huge sums of cash-in-hand because of just one deal when the opportunity strikes, but be struggling up till that point financially.

Guess what? My father ever taught me that philosophy(well, very practical philosophy) through this chinese principle. To the traditional Chinese philosophical scholars, they would recognise that in various texts, the triple treasures in the universe is identified as "Heaven", "Earth" and "Human". (Pronounced Tian, Di and Ren in Chinese).

A further expansion of the 3 words would be "Tian Shi", "Di Li", "Ren He". Sounds confusing? Haha, not meant to be yeah. So here's a simple explanation.

"Tian Shi" refers to the element of timing. And it is coupled with "Heaven" because it is pretty true (at least to me) that alot of things we do and encounter are preordained. After all, we can't quite control what occurs to us even if we can take control of how we spend our time on earth yeah?) And we can never know which is the most opportune time for us to make the right decisions.

"Di Li" denotes geography. This refers to being at the right place for events to happen to catapult us in the direction of our life purpose's fulfilment. Again , here we see that we can't control where we are, or rather, whether we are in the right place for such events to occur.

"Ren He" speaks of orderly and harmonious human relationships. But, to my father, it also denotes human effort. And this is absolutely necessary, whether it is relationships or effort, for success to happen.

Oh, and if I haven't mentioned, this is actually a philosophy of success. The key idea is that of the 3 elements, humans, to a great extent, often only have control over the last element. But yet, it is required for all 3 to concur before success can come. For a project to work out, or an aim be fulfilled, the right timing, correct geography, and full effort are all required. Yet, we can only control the last.

So what's the lesson? Should we second guess when the timing and our location be right to act? If we can't control or predict when and where the wind of opportunities come from and arrive, shouldn't we do our utmost to make sure we always have fully exploit our position by maximising our effort and building networks?

So, we can expect that with maximum effort, we could and will still fail. But beyond that, when finally we have our taste of success with the confluence of all 3 elements, then we begin to exert our influence over the first 2 elements. Well, to be honest, I still need to figure out this point and it's validity.

Well, guys, for now, put in your best efforts yeah! You never know when the other 2 elements surface to help you in your quest for your deepest desires.

PS, I disabled the screening for posting of comments. So do try again and post as much you would wish to!