This past Monday night, I was driving from Philadelphia back up to New York, thinking about the state of my life. I had just finished playing a show with Woe, our last show for the next few months because Ruston, our drummer, and his girlfriend are about to have a son. The other guys and I chipped in to get them some gift cards to Babies R Us and Target. The crowd was great for a Monday night and kind of poor promotion, about 75 people, and my friend Cullen filled in on vocals for half of our set at the last minute because I was (and still am) dealing with an upper respiratory infection. It was also the first show with Grzesiek, one of my oldest and best friends, on bass. We played a short, furious set; lots of friends were there and everyone had a great time.

The drive was easy and quiet. I listened to Cynic’s brilliant “Traced in Air” and thought about how lucky I am. My job is fantastic. My music is appreciated. I have friends and family who love me and I love them. I am healthy. I am as self-sufficient as anyone can be expected to be. I have goals that I am achieving, hope for the future, reasonable expectations.

At the same time this was going on, I thought about a child I saw in Philadelphia before I left town. It was almost midnight and he was in a stroller, being pushed by some crackhead fuckup, laughing loudly with two friends. This child’s future was decided. As Philadelphia cuts more and more social services, the likelihood that it will ever be anything other than its parent decrease more and more. It will have to work harder, be smarter, and suffer more to achieve a fraction of what I achieved by kind of coasting through life, doing what came naturally. Sure, I worked hard, but my hard work compared to the hard work they will have to do… who can imagine?

And so, as I drove, my thoughts shifted back and forth between appreciation for the night and my life to this kid to something between wonder and excitement and fear that comes with knowing that everything we do, everything we have, everything that we are and will be is ultimately decided by luck.

Skill and hard work can only get you so far. Every individual has to be responsible for where they end up, but the most you can ever hope is that they will have the opportunity and ability to make things work in your favor. Nothing is truly earned; at some point, someone or something helps you get where you are and what you want. Maybe it’s a person you met along the way or an idea someone introduced you to or being born to the right people at the right time — we are all the result of an infinite number of variables outside of our control.

This is definitely not a new idea but when was the last time you really thought about it and let it matter to you? There isn’t anything to be done about it (and what would you do, if you could?) but the more you have, the more successful and happy you are, the more you should think about this and let it humble you. Every victory should be tempered with a reminder that you only earned a part of what you have, not all of it. It’s not God, it’s not Fate, it’s not some plan; it’s luck, stupid luck, that keeps you healthy and upright while so many others are suffering, born to shit, born as shit, with no choices or healthy one minute and sick the next.

I think that all I can do is appreciate and exploit my current fortunate and do my best to improve the world around me. As quickly as good things appear, they can disappear — of this I am acutely aware, more now than ever. This is why the popular concepts of conservatism and libertarianism are so silly to me: how can you think that cutting social services and making things easiest for people who already have the resources to succeed (businesses, the wealthy, individuals who don’t rely on some publicly funded aid) is a reasonable thing to do? Everyone was helped somewhere along the way, either by another person or by stupid fucking luck. We all have things we don’t deserve because nobody really deserves much of anything, we can only make the best of what luck gives us.

I will try to not forget this. Let it always keep me grounded.