This is like a 180 degree turn-around to the insights I gained from The Alchemist. Though we tend to form very concrete explanations on how we arrived at where we are in life, we cannot really predict where we are going to end up in the very near future.
Having been given these two frames of mind, there is more 'science' for taking the point of view that life is a mixed serving of unpredictability and persistence. As humans we are sort of hardwired to think of causality and determinism, thus all the movies about how life is destined.
Our circumstance in life is most often than we care to admit affected by a lot of unpredictable and uncontrollable factors, that it is simply incorrect to credit our success(or failure) to our own talents and doings.
This however doesn't excuse us to be just complacent. Although with modest effort, we will do end up somewhere, it doesn't follow that it is where we truly want to be. Like molecules or atoms, we will constantly bump with other molecules and thus push or pull us to somewhere. But to go to somewhere at least near where we want to go, will require a lot of persistence from our part.
"For in a complex undertaking, no matter how many times we fail, if we keep trying, there is often a good chance we will eventually succeed..
..That deterministic view is the view in which it is mainly the intrinsic qualities of the person or the product that governs success. But there is another way to look at it, a nondeterministic veiw. In this view there are many high-quality but unknown books, singers, actors and what makes one or another come to stand out is largely a conspiracy of random and minor factors- that is, luck..."
from The Drunkard's Walk by Leonard Mlodinow
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