The debate started pulsing sometime in the
second week of July. Its rhythm rose rapidly as the week unfolded and reached a
crescendo by the end of the week. The debate was neither new nor has it been
settled for ever. It is something that occupies our thoughts when we witness
unexpected success. The success, of course, is unexpected because of those
succeeding and our appraisals of them. Kevin Anderson, who reached the
Wimbledon final, and the Three Lions, who reached the semi-final of the FIFA
World Cup 2018, had divided sports fans into the pack that labelled them lucky
and the pack that lauded their labor.
The luck versus labor debate rests largely on
your definition and perception of luck. When luck is viewed as a set of factors
that occurred and so carried someone to success despite minimal or no effort on
their part, luck is bound to trouble the self-averred meritocracy. Given their
maxim of effort alone elevates, they have no choice but to expend effort on
casting the success as an outlier; even the slightest possibility of someone
edging away from effort and leaning on luck must be prevented. And so, ‘lucky’
is used as a disparaging descriptor of the success and for the successful.
Kevin Anderson was lucky because he benefited from Roger Federer faltering.
England were lucky because they did not encounter any of the traditional
footballing powerhouses on their way to the semi-final.
Using ‘lucky’ to warn against complacency and
leaning on luck is a neat ploy. But, as with other similar human endeavors, the
trick has turned into a tenet that is sought to be strengthened and spread
using incidents and episodes as evidence. The task, unluckily – given that the
effortful seem unconscious of it, results in a patchy survey of the evidence.
For instance, both Kevin Anderson and England might have benefited from the
draw. But, the draw is a compromise. It is an admission that despite resolving
and trying to be fair, we may fail. It is an attempt to make the contest as
fair as life can be by relying on chance rather than vitiated human agency.
Sporting contests provide such drama and
evoke such attention because they are inherently fickle, and so form a capsule
of life, much like theatre and literature. Life is inherently fickle, chaotic
even, because of the many unknown and unknowable, uncontrolled and
uncontrollable forces that affect us. The desire to know and control all these
forces may seem an ideal mission for life to some, and quixotic to others.
Notwithstanding that difference in judgment, it is perhaps only realistic to
acknowledge that we are yet master these forces. Accordingly, luck may also be
defined as the set of factors that create the circumstances in which we may
excel at our very best. In this sense, luck conditions our success but not our
hope to excel. Having accepted that luck is a mystery element that may favor
us, we must still ready ourselves to make the most of luck. Kevin Anderson
might have beaten a shaky Roger Federer, but he did so using a scathing serve
and a forbidding forehand – shots he had mastered through practice,
observation, introspection, and adjustment in a feedback cycle that kicked in
when he first played competitive tennis. Similarly, England had trained through
the World Cup qualifiers and during the many training sessions to score from
set-plays, to be staunch in defense, and, perhaps most importantly, to fight
for each other, and win and lose together. They were better than the English
teams of the recent past; they had succeeded in approaching the best they could
be. Their success was lucky only as far as success always is.
A consciousness of luck as a determiner of the
outcome, as long as it doesn’t hamper effort, is essential for a proper
perspective of both success and failure. You may have tried as hard as you could
and yet failed. Turning a lens on your effort, in such a scenario, may only
lead to frustration or even resignation; why keep at something for which you
are not cut out as borne by your failures? On the other hand, when luck is an
element in the equation, you can step back and assess your improvement and the
windfall. While your improvement motivates you to excel further, your knowledge
of windfall tempers any thought of invincibility. Kevin Anderson would well be
aware of the weaknesses in his game that favored Novak Djokovic in the
Wimbledon final as also the frailty of Federer that favored him in the quarter
final. Yet, the knowledge should not prevent him from taking pride in the
serves and forehand passes he got right and the endurance that enabled him to
walk onto the court for the final after his punishing week of marathon matches.
Similarly, England must celebrate the unity that has eluded them before, and the
efficiency and efficacy with which they emulated their training ground
exercises in the raucous stadia. England, and their manager Gareth Southgate,
no doubt recognize that they can play much better football in terms of style
and potency, and should get to work on it.
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