[mcantor]

"The harder I work, the luckier I seem to be." - Thomas Edison

From this, I take "hard work" to mean working mindfully, not "counting photographs" as in the article. To work and live mindfully is to do each thing as if you did nothing else: you are fully present in each moment, drinking in your surroundings without judgment or abstraction. A hundred trees are not a hundred trees--each one is a new experience, with different patterns in its bark and different rustling in its leaves. To use the article's example, a party is not a "party". To the "lucky" person, to the mindful person, they are not "at a party"; they are simply talking, laughing, connecting.

I strive for this kind of mindset, and grasp it sometimes. Like zen, the harder you try to hold on to it, the quicker it slips away. At least, I can always look at the trappings of my privileged middle-class life and know that, for these things, I am lucky, and that helps me stay mindful.