I in turn think you undervalue his luck, but obviously we can't know what would have happened if electricity had not been discovered yet. And in turn, one of m

I in turn think you undervalue his luck, but obviously we can't know what would have happened if electricity had not been discovered yet. And in turn, one of my points was that if your dream is to invent an affordable light that doesn't need gas or wood, it sure helps a lot (some might call it lucky) if other people already did stuff that helps you. How about this? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edison_Ore-Milling_Company https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edison_Ore-Milling_Company "I'm going to do something now so different and so much bigger than anything I've ever done before people will forget that my name ever was connected with anything electrical." When it failed, he said "it's all gone, but we had a hell of a good time spending it." So how does this reconcile with his "passion for doing stuff until the goal is reached" and "his ingenuity [and] dedication to achieving his objective"? I guess if only he'd tried the 1001st way to mill iron ore, he surely would have succeeded! I almost feel like I've knocked down a strawman by showing somebody wasn't perfect or 100% successful, yet that's another way to phrase my point that you are disagreeing with. There is no way to guarantee success at just any given goal. Sometimes the opportunity to have a good goal fall into your lap, or things to line up in support of the goal you chose, is just luck. If nothing else, there's an element of luck in whether your heart continues beating (even if your goal is within reasonable constraints of life expectancy and health.) Sure, if you care about something, work as hard as you can to find out whether you have that luck. But if you care about other things, maybe be ready to re-prioritize if the luck isn't coming.