Till sixteen, I lived with this unshakable belief that if you work hard enough for something, there's nothing in the world that can stop you from having it. Every motivational book, every great personality seemed to say the same thing — hard work conquers all.
And I believed it. Blindly.
But somewhere along the way, that belief cracked.
Because life, the real, raw, unfiltered life, doesn't always follow that formula.
Now, I feel that yes, efforts matter. They make you deserving, they shape your path, they build your character.
But the final push, the invisible hand that decides if all that effort will turn into success, is luck.
I know that sounds like something a loser would say. But trust me, it's not. It's something I've seen, lived, and accepted after watching people around me give everything they had and still fall short.
I've seen someone study twenty hours a day for three years straight.
Sacrifice her sleep. Wake up at four on winter mornings.
Study through fever, chaos, exhaustion. Give up every small joy that life offered.
And still, fail.
Yes, I'm talking about my sister. That was her story.
She wanted to be a doctor. She gave her youth to that dream.
And yet, when the results came, she missed the cutoff by just a few marks.
I remember sitting there, staring at the screen, unable to process it. I was so sure she'd make it. But more than that, I was scared of what would happen if she didn't.
And then it happened.
It wasn't even my result, but it broke something in me.
Because I had seen every bit of her effort. The sleepless nights, the two-hour naps, the silence of discipline, the sacrifice of joy.
And if after all that, she still didn't get what she deserved, then how can anyone say luck doesn't matter?
Even if God himself came down and told me, "She failed because she didn't try enough," I swear I'd stop believing in him that very moment. Because that girl gave it everything.
That day, my definition of hard work changed forever.
Luck, I realized, isn't just about random chance. It's that invisible variable that decides which effort pays off and which doesn't.
And it's not just in academics, it's everywhere.
In love, for instance. You can love someone with the purest intentions, care with everything in you, show up in all the right ways, and they still might not see you.
Not because you did something wrong, but because it just wasn't written.
Love is dumb luck. It's terrifying because you never know if luck will side with your heart or break it.
In every part of life — love, dreams, careers, we build, we fight, we hope. And still, sometimes it all slips through our fingers because it wasn't ours to keep.
Luck is like salt, no matter how perfectly you cook, if it's missing, the dish will still taste incomplete.
If a chapter isn't written in your story, no amount of struggle will make it appear.
That's the bitter truth of life; sometimes your efforts just aren't enough.
Recently, I participated in a college event. I was genuinely excited, made a team of five, registered early, built our idea from scratch. We were nervous but proud.
A few of us fell sick right before the event, but we pulled through. I spent nights working on the prototype, perfecting slides, rehearsing every line.
And then on the big day, our presentation didn't open. Some random technical glitch in my laptop. Everything we built, everything we wanted to say; gone in a blink.
We stood there helpless, watching the effort of days go up in smoke.
But strangely, I made peace with it sooner than the others. Because I knew this feeling too well.
It wasn't new.
It was the same feeling I'd seen on my sister's face years ago, that silent ache of doing everything right and still losing.
She taught me something without even trying to. That when life doesn't go your way, you find another dream. Another reason to wake up. Another obsession.
Because life moves on, even when you don't want it to.
Sometimes, life feels like a cruel joke. You pour your soul into something, and still, it slips through your fingers.
You do everything right, but the world forgets to reward you.
And yet, we keep trying.
We still wake up chasing dreams we know luck might betray.
We still dare to love that person who may never look back.
We still believe that maybe this time, fate will be kind.
Because somewhere, beneath all our disbelief, we still hope that luck will finally notice our efforts.
That maybe, just maybe, this time the universe will choose us.
And that, that fragile hope, is what keeps us alive.