Late luck and the weekly stall

Think of someone in Amman who binds books by hand and sells them from a small stall at a weekend market. Some weekends she sells nothing. Some she sells one book to a stranger who comes back the following month with three friends.

Good fortune is like that. It does not keep a schedule, and it does not arrive evenly. The buyer who will change her year might walk past in March or in November. There is no way to know which weekend, and no way to make it this one.

What she can influence are two things.

The first is staying power. If she can afford for the break to come late, a slow month is only a slow month. If she cannot, a slow month ends the whole thing, and the stranger with three friends arrives to an empty patch of pavement. Resilience here is not optimism. It is the practical ability to still be standing when later turns out to be the answer.

The second is showing up often. Every weekend at the stall is another draw. Every new batch, every conversation with a passer-by, every time her work is put where someone can pick it up, is another chance for the right person to see it. She cannot make luck come sooner, but she can give it more doors to come through.

Most people who look lucky have quietly done both. They lasted long enough, and they were out there often enough, that the uneven, unpunctual thing finally found them.