Don't call it luck

Last week I moved into a beautiful new office. It's been tremendous--both the volume of work and the volume of joy. It's a terrific move for me and my practice.

I've been feeling all sorts of things: proud, joyous, a bit nervous (bigger space=bigger rent). Though it only just occurred to me as I read this morning's paper that I didn't, in the least, feel lucky.

The New York Times ran a bio piece on the actor Peter Dinklage, who's stirred up a lot of praise for his starring role in Game of Thrones. I've been a fan of his since 2003's The Station Agent. It's an indie film that explores the experience of loneliness better than about anything I've seen. Dinklage is incredible in it. (Inexplicably, the Station Agent isn't on Netflix, but you can rent it on iTunes. Do.)

By the way, Dinklage is 4'5" tall. Which, although his performances easily move this fact to the back of your mind, is not insignificant. Mostly, it's significant for the choices he didn't make in his career. No, you haven't seen him play an elf, and he's never appeared on screen with a long beard. While it no doubt would have helped him make a few bucks while waiting for the film industry to create a decent part of someone of his stature, he passed. He made it the hard way, to say the least.

So does he feel lucky?

"I feel really lucky,” he said, then added, “although I hate that word — ‘lucky.’ ” When I asked him why, he mulled it over for a moment, looking away. Then he focused back on me. “It cheapens a lot of hard work,” he said. “Living in Brooklyn in an apartment without any heat and paying for dinner at the bodega with dimes — I don’t think I felt myself lucky back then. Doing plays for 50 bucks and trying to be true to myself as an” — here he put on a faux snooty voice — “artist and turning down commercials where they wanted a leprechaun. Saying I was lucky negates the hard work I put in and spits on that guy who’s freezing his ass off back in Brooklyn.”

I'm with Dinklage. I don't care to call it luck. Because there's a lot of work that's gone into building what I've got (not nearly my work alone). And there are many out there doing that hard work, too.

It's not that I don't believe some people get a better deal in life than others. But you try winning an Emmy as a grown man of 4'5". That ain't luck.