Genius, pt. XV

After Edinburgh, Eric Weiner went to Calcutta to learn more about it’s golden age for “The Geography of Genius.” There he met a man who told him that “the possibility of coincidence is greater here [Calcutta] than it is elsewhere.”

From this, the author considered “the role of coincidence- and its close cousins, randomness and chaos – and what role that might play…in all creative endeavors,” and he thought that maybe chance, instead of a specific formula, was the thing that he had been looking for and that leads to genius places.

I don’t remember if he arrived at a conclusion about the role of luck in creating genius places, but I believe that luck does play a role in life. Unfortunately, it isn’t something we can control. As the Turks say, “A man does not seek his luck, luck seeks its man.”

However, I think it’s possible for us to affect it through karma. I believe that good things come to good people, and luck is simply good things happening at the right time and the right place. So the more we do good things, the more we can be lucky. And maybe this explains why one of the reasons why places of genius became genius of places; people in these places weren’t thinking about doing great things for themselves but also for the world.