Between Luck, Blind Spots and the Scaffold
I consider it a stroke of luck that I am able to live my life the way I want to.
Some roles or positions probably require a larger ego, and I can understand that. Even so, I keep wondering how someone comes to believe that their own life could serve as a universal model—as though their personal path proved that everyone else could have followed it as well.
That is where the meta-level knocks on the door. And my own position does not stand outside it either. Anyone who declares their own path to be universally valid overlooks much of what made it possible in the first place: chance, starting conditions, people who appeared at the right moment, doors that opened without them ever having touched the handle. The ego mistakes a personal story for an instruction manual. It sees the path itself, but not the scaffold on which it was built.
And yet, this is precisely where the next difficulty begins. Even when I say that I owe a considerable part of my life to luck, I am not speaking from nowhere. I am telling my story from my own perspective. Perhaps I underestimate my own effort. Perhaps I overestimate chance. Humility, too, is a way of seeing the world—not a position outside it.
That is where the real challenge lies. I can recognise that every life is shaped by conditions that remain hidden from my view. But even that insight does not eliminate my own blind spot. I can name it. I can try to judge cautiously. I cannot step outside it.
Perhaps that is the whole answer. Not that we should stop telling our own stories or taking pride in what we have achieved. Rather, that we should tell our story as a story—not as proof.
The difference between “This is how I experienced it” and “This is how the world is”—that is the entire distance between gratitude and presumption.
Written on 29 July 2026 at 14:40. © 2026 Whisper7. All rights reserved.