Luck
Luck plays an outsized role in life. More than we realise. Yet it is ephemeral. Feels like something you don't have control over. You can't just acquire luck like you acquire knowledge. You can't store it and cash it in at the right moments like money. For these reasons, I just ignored it for the longest time. Until I became lucky.
When I joined college for my master's degree I decided to do a little experiment. It was a new environment. New people. I could be whatever I wanted. I chose to be the lucky guy. I started telling people I had really good luck when good things happened. It was a bit. But I was committed to the bit.
Weirdly enough a lot of extremely lucky things started happening. The code that didn't work as well in testing worked smoothly in a demo. I got the perfect room. I ended up choosing the best electives. Small things or big things but my luck was on point. The people around me started calling me lucky. The bit took a life of its own. It became real.
When you think about it luck is just remembering bias. Anyone can choose to be lucky. You ignore the bad instances and hype up the good instances. The brain is good at filtering out the noise and catching the signal. The signal is what you want to focus on. It is the classic example of when you want a specific car you see that car on the road more often.
We collectively hallucinated a reality into existence where I was lucky. I wonder if so much of what you think you are(lucky, strong, charming) is just a collective hallucination. Something you curated intentionally or happened to stumble upon in the right environments. It is fascinating.