So You Want to Move to Europe…

Lucky is as Lucky does

I'm a great believer in luck, and I find the harder I work the more I have of it. ― Thomas Jefferson

A woman I have recently become friends with on social media called me lucky. Just this morning, she told me how lucky I was to be living in France, in Europe, outside of the United States at this point in time.

Her statement reminded me of a moment a long time ago, standing on a New York City street corner with a friend. We both lived in New York, and both worked there, he in some upper level job in finance, me in a tiny art gallery downtown. He had wages that allowed him to dine out and go clubbing as often as he wished, buy tailored suits, live in a one-bedroom in the city, have a future. My wages allowed me to take the subway in and out of Manhattan from my 5th-floor walkup in working class Brooklyn and back again, and buy groceries. Oh, I’m not complaining, just illustrating my story.

I remember the moment and the exchange clearly; I had just told him I was quitting my job, leaving New York, and going to Paris. “You’re lucky,” he said, “that you don’t have a real job. I would do that, too, if I could.” And I thought to myself - I might have even said it out loud, I can’t remember - “It’s not luck. It’s a decision. You could do it, too, if you wanted to.”

He is where he is supposed to be. And yet the place he has found is also of his own choosing. That is a piece of luck not to be despised. ― Cormac McCarthy, The Crossing