I believe that the difference between Arabs and Americans is that the latter are always trying to do the right thing and never succeed, however, the Arabs never do the right thing, but always succeed. Success in the Arabs case doesn’t necessarily mean achieving your goals; it’s surviving. It’s not even based on luck. Luck comes to organized people. People who at least had the decency to try. Luck is the personification of divine will. That’s how Arabs see it. The problem is that not because you’re striving to do the best gives you the right to educate others about your failures. And like they say: “if you can do it, do it - if you can’t, teach it.”

Which leads us to an interesting comparison between doing things and depending on luck. It is amazing how all civilizations believed in luck. Even the strongest, the most academic, the most philosophical, the most religious - all of these cultures and societies still believed in the unknown force that made our wishes come true. Some explained it as a divine matter, some said it’s the nature’s force, and others didn’t even bother explaining what it was - they just believed in what it does, and unlike our modern civilization; they s’en fiche royalement on how it works. This quality really distinguishes our civilization from other ones. We always wanted to know why things happen. Why and how. We simply lack faith.

It’s a paradox really. Believing in luck for some would equally mean that you don’t have faith; since for some luck is nothing but randomness - and since faith is believing in a controlling Master, nothing is left for hazard. On the other hand, if you don’t believe in luck, you’re denying a “divine force” that no one can deny. That also make you faithless. Which is rather wrong because if we take the Egyptian civilisation as an example, Renenutet, the goddess of fortune, was married to the Sobet, the Nile River - which represent a lot to the Egyptians back then, so such mean that fortune and luck played a central role in the everyday life of Egyptians.