In October last year (2012) I was contacted by Martha Thorne, Executive Director of the Pritzker Prize. Apparently she came across the blog and was reading my notes and criticisms of the prize. She was kind enough to leave a short note to let me know that she enjoyed my articles which she considered thoughtful. She also asked me if I would like to nominate any architect(s) for the 2013 Pritzker Prize. Below is my response to her:
I decided to release this note now because I think it is particularly relevant given the discussion that was set off when Denise Scott Brown asked to be retroactively recognized (after 20 years) by the Pritzker Prize since her partner Robert Venturi was awarded the prize alone for a career and body of work that they built together.
You may have also seen a growing petition to Martha supporting Denise Scott Brown’s request. (You can sign the petition here)
In this letter, you will aslo note that this is something that I had cautioned Martha about: That the Pritzker can either adopt and partake in shaping a new reality of inclusiveness or face backlash and/or irrelevance.
Hi Martha,
Thanks for visiting the blog and thanks for being a good sport and writing.
While I wouldn't go as far as nominating anyone I would say that if you are relying solely on nominations, then that's your first mistake. If the Pritzker has the means to give away $100,000 every year and a network spanning the most prestigious institutions around globe, not to mention the world wide reach of the Hyatt Hotels, then its a safe assumption that you also have the means to assemble a team dedicated to research and intelligence gathering on architects around the world that are doing work that genuinely contributes to humanity.
As I mentioned in one of my articles on the Pritzker, The Nobel Prize in Literature is pretty successful at combing the globe and picking out individuals that are making worthy contributions to the world through their writings.
What's really cool about the Nobel is how unpredictable they are. Take the Peace Prize for example (withstanding this year’s bizarre pick of the European Union): their recipients are wide ranging and could be anyone from the president of the United States one year, a Chinese political prisoner sitting in jail, the next year and three local freedom fighting women from Africa and Yemen the following year. The only criteria is that they are doing something to make a significant contribution to peace in the world.
Does giving the Nobel to these relatively unknown people struggling to make a difference, advance their cause in any way. You bet! That's what the Nobel prize does.
Since, you often refer to yourselves as Architecture's Nobel, I would suggest that as a start, you invite someone from the Nobel's Literature prize selection committee to come over and meet with you and exchange notes over coffee. Find out how they do it! I am sure they would be obliged. Seriously. If you are going to call yourselves Architecture's Nobel, then why not go all the way?
I sometimes talk about how every year around springtime starchitects of the first world get a little anxious and jittery in the belly because they are wondering if you are going to call. I implore you to imagine a world where absolutely any architect in any part of the world who have been genuinely doing work that makes a significant contribution to humanity feel jittery in their bellies around spring time too. Think about how many architects would seriously consider how their own work contributes to humanity? How many architects would make more ethical choices in their practices? How many more architects would strive to be more socially conscious than they normally do?
There are not that many institutions out there that can do this, but yours can. You have the ability to influence the world in this way. Consider that for a moment.
The sleek forms, and spectacular spaces that some of your recipients make and were selected for are nice. Really nice. I admire them, and some of your laureates are my greatest architectural heroes. I don't want to take away anything from them or what they contribute to architecture, but I think that great forms and spectacular spaces are not the only measure of an architect's qualities of talent, vision or commitment to the built environment or the profession.
The mission statement of the Pritzker also asks that the recipient should be making significant contributions to humanity. This is the aspect that you have consistently overlooked. It is really hard to see how any of the past laureates have made any consistent contributions to humanity.
Perhaps there is no one architect that fits both criteria at once (making significant contributions in each category) so perhaps it is worth alternating between architects that meet major parts each year.
Here is another thing to consider, the Pritzker is a very prestigious award, and it will probably remain so for a long time. However, it is quite obvious that a lot of the long held attitudes toward celebrity culture in architecture are changing . A single minded focus on the celebrity class is kind of lopsided. Most of the architects I know (and I know quite a lot) are not just interested in the sleekest building and the latest spectacle from about Zaha, Rem, etc. We are also interested in the multitudes of innovative ways in which many other architects around the world are contributing to the profession and humanity.
I am sure you are aware of the TED organization. They have a platform that gives attention to people from a wide variety of communities that are making innovative contributions to their communities a chance to be seen and heard. They have people ranging from the likes of former president Bill Clinton to William Kamkwamba (an African teenage boy who built his family an electricity-generating windmill from scrap parts). I believe this is the model of the future: It is indiscriminately merit based, and inclusive. The Pritzker was perhaps born in a time and place where prestige and exclusivity was seen as the highest virtue in the profession. That time has come and is slowly fading. The way I see it, you guys are at a crossroads: You can adopt and partake in shaping this new reality or you can cling to your name and prestige and hope that history swings back in your favor.
I understand that the committee is constrained/obligated to follow certain rules stipulated by the Pritzker mandate. However, even the greatest constitutions are meant to be broken, literally. The U.S. constitution, for example, was intended be dismantled and rewritten every 19 years. The authors realized that they would not be around to foresee all the changes that the world will undergo long after they died and I suppose they trusted that the keepers of society's laws would be thoughtful, morally cognizant and intelligent enough to make good decisions. Even though no one ever did do it, it is true. Just ask justice Breyer next time you see him.
I brought this up because, this is perhaps the obvious obstacles to some of the suggestions I am making. For example, I thought your choice of Wang Shu this year was a pretty decent one, however, I felt you should have included his partner Lu Wenyu as well. The argument presented by you (perhaps shaped by the forces in the Pritzker organization) was basically to point to the rules, precedents and procedures of the Pritzker mandate. However, I would bet that if you put all the bylaws and regulations aside, took a deep breath and asked yourself the question:
Do I feel in my heart that this is the right thing to do?
I think you would have agreed that Lu should have been included as well. While I understand that you are the executive director and not a voting member of the committee your influence on the jury is of significance. Think about it, would it be so bad to bend the rules a little bit (as you have done before in the cases of Herzog & De Meruon and SANAA) to do what you know in your gut is the right thing? The Nobel Prize does it all the time. The Nobel Peace prize mandate for example, stipulates that the prize should be given to a person (singular). However, they have given the prize multiple times to organizations such as the United Nations, The International Red Cross, and several other organizations over the course of its history.
In the end, they have chosen to award the prize in line with the intent and spirit of the mandate rather than the rules that bound it.
I think you should consider my suggestions in the same spirit.
Speaking of intentions, I must apologize for this long tome of a letter, it was not my intention to outline a bold new vision for the Pritzker, but I felt this was important to at least try to persuade you. After all, it's not everyday one gets contacted by the executive director of the Pritzker Prize. :)
Deception
and paradox is the touchstone of Peter Zumthor’s branding strategy. By
that I mean that he blatantly goes around promoting himself as a
reclusive non-promoter. He goes on television, radio, interviews, films,
etc only to then say that he does not believe in promoting himself. Its
like a commercial advertisement saying “look at our product, it is so
good we don’t have to advertise it” .
I had written an article about this exact same thing some years ago (you can read it here),
then at the Venice Biennale I was confronted by it again via the Wim
Wenders film about Zumthor “NOTES FROM A DAY IN THE LIFE OF AN
ARCHITECT”. There it was again, plain as day staring me in the face:
Yet another blatant self promoting stunt, this time in the form of a
film, placed in the middle of the Venice Biennale (the biggest, most eventful architectural spectacle in the world) targeted to a specific architecturally interested group, all while claiming that he is not interested in image making.
For
a guy who is not driven by image making or doesn't believe in self
promotion, this is an awfully promotional thing to do. You simply can
not get more promotional than that.
What’s
interesting is that this is a film not so much about Zumthor’s work,
but more about Zumthor the man himself. He is presented as this great
master architect: a made to order genius who has all the answers figured
out; a deity ready to be worshiped. I was expecting the film to end with the narrator urging the audience to take a "pilgrimage" to his studio at least once in their lifetimes and lay at his feet and absorb his infinite wisdom.
Without any critical perspective, the film turns 5 minutes into one long masturbatory
monologue of lustful admiration. It just showers a lot of praise on him
personally, not so much his office or the people working for him
(though they were mentioned and shown peripherally) but on him, his
traits, his personal habits, his hands, his feet, his unstyled style
white beard, his purposefully unkempt eyebrows, his black plastic framed
glasses, etc.
More correctly this is Zumthor porn.
It had nothing whatsoever to do with the theme of the Biennale: Common ground.
This
was just a downright blatant self promotional stunt. In the context of
the biennale, it felt like an outright infomercial.
The film starts off with the master making a cup of coffee, in his kitchen as Wim Wender’s narrator voice gently chimes in:
...He is a man who is very adamant about his morning coffee.
We
were able to spend a couple of days with him in his atelier and get a
look at two of the projects Peter Zumthor was working on right now with
his team of mostly young architects. I was most impressed by the sense
of place in the buildings of his that I have seen so far and in the
sites that I have visited in the past: museums, public structures,
chapels, private houses.
But
meeting Peter Zumthor here in the apartment and office space he had
built for himself and watching him work, I was even more impressed...
Below are some screenshots from the film:
Here is the great
master making coffee barefooted. If you are a seasoned publicist such
as the ones working on political campaigns styling the candidate for the
right look to convey the right message, then you will know that showing
barefoot in such a context is meant to soften the image and show him as
a man connected to the ground, in touch with the earth, a sensitivity
for the materials and the architectural surfaces around him. This was no
accident. Though I have no doubt that this is how he normally goes
about his studio, showing him like this adds to the theatrics and
reinforces the image of him as the materially sensitive reclusive: That
is the Zumthor brand.
This is how Peter Zumthor drinks his morning coffee
This is Peter Zumthor after drinking his coffee
Here is a shot of Peter Zumthor's masterful hands as they draw
And
this one...this is the money shot right here: the centerfold spread. As
Peter reclines in his Le Corbusier chair with one leg over the armrest,
the narrator's voice gently says:
I
was even more impressed by his sense of time, how much he is at ease
and relaxed, cool, calm and collective, well spoken and most of all how
he refuses to be rushed: He lets his projects ripen and mature like good
wines so that they reveal themselves more and more to him and his team.
So then he keeps mulling on the goodness he wants to do so that he can
actually improve on them layer after layer, until he feels that they
can't be built better. Only then he goes ahead: A procedure that would
be considered an outrageous luxury not only in my own profession...
The
suggestion here is that Zumthor is never stressed out about deadlines,
client pressure, etc. He does the project fully on his terms. A man at
ease with himself and the world: a Don among architects if you will.
This kind of reminds me of someone I know:
"I am a passionate architect, I don't always work for money, but when I do, I prefer Deception and Paradox." ..."Stay foolish, my friends."
When you have a statement like the following (this is the parting words of the film):
Peter
Zumthor an architect not driven by the need to make a name for himself
or constructing as much as possible, but driven by the urgent desire to
improve his buildings so that the lives of those people using them or
living in them will become better
It implies that he is an exception to the norm, that most other architects are overly driven by making a name for themselves,
that we just want to build as much as possible, that the majority of us
are not interested in improving the lives of our clients through our
work. But Peter Zumthor is one of the rear bread that does care and have
integrity.
This just does not hold water.
I
have traveled around the world and I have met architects from all
corners of the planet and in my experience, as a group, architects are
by and large very decent people that come with a lot of integrity and
passion for what they do. I have yet to come across an architect who
really does not give a shit about his/her clients. Even the dirtiest
scums at the bottom of the profession who take advantage of interns, etc, generally tend to want to make their clients satisfied.
It is the first principle of being in and staying in business.
Making a name for ourselves?
...OK, guilty as charged.
If
I am correct, most architects with any ambition or simply a desire to
stay in business, want to make a name for themselves. Like making the
lives of their clients better through their work, this is a primary
principle of any successful practice, making a name for your self is
also a rule of survival for every architecture firm.
Some firms do it better than others.
Star
architects do it best.
Peter Zumthor is no exception, in fact he does
it extraordinarily well, he puts more effort and energy into image
making than most architects out there; otherwise you would never have heard of him.
When
I traveled to Switzerland to see Therme Vals (which was pretty much
just as nice in reality as in the pictures by the way), I went around to
see some of his other works as well. As I drove around the Swiss
countryside, namely in Chur, Vals, and the surrounding regions, what
I noticed was that Zumthor's kind of work (or at least works that were
highly detailed with special sensitivity to materials) was not
particularly unique in that region where he is from. There were a lot of
other contemporary Swiss architects there doing work that was just as
good as Zumthor’s and a good deal of them were even more impressive.
They were all drawing on the historic character and sensitivity of the old stone and wooden architecture that define the region. And so I thought to myself, why have I not heard more about these other architects
and why have I heard so much about Zumthor?
It could not be the work,
because if it was just based on the merits and quality of the works,
Zumthor probably would not be number one. It has to be something else.
So just the other day I came across an article titled "Me, Peter Zumthor, and my broken sandal" on
BDonline written by Amanda Baillieu. In it she described an encounter
she had with Zumthor where she, along with several other British
journalists, were invited to Switzerland by the Swiss Embassy to visit
its national exhibition expo there. On the itinerary of the trip, the
press corp was to meet and have dinner with Zumthor after visiting
Therme Vals.
She
described a meeting where all the reporters (except for one) were
basically in awe of the great master who stayed and conversed with them
late into the evening, keeping the beer and wine coming, and even
inviting them to come and visit him at his atelier. Baillieu took him up
on his offer and took the “pilgrimage” to see him. On her way there,
her sandal broke and when she arrived, they took note of it. She was
allowed to take the sandals off and have the meeting with the great
master barefooted. At the end of the meeting her sandals were returned to her repaired.
To
a non-publicist, this is a nice story that shows the kind of guy
Zumthor is and nothing more. To a media savvy strategist there is a
whole lot more to this than what’s on the surface. It gives a direct
window into Zumthor's brilliance as a self-promoter.
This
story squarely answers my question about why I have heard so much about
Zumthor and why I have never heard about any of the other Swiss
architects that were doing comparable work. When it comes to managing
his image and promoting himself, he is just flat out better than his
competition by far.
First of all, he has a head start, given his stature and the breadth of his network. With the exception of maybe Herzog and
De Meuron, no other architect in Switzerland today would be given the
opportunity to meet with an international press corp after visiting your
signal work. That is golden: money cannot buy that. But lets say one of
these other unknown Swiss architects were given this opportunity, I
don’t think they would have a clue how to handle themselves let alone
the press, but Zumthor is a master at this.
For
one, he makes time for them: I am sure he has a very busy schedule and
even though he publicly professes that he doesn't believe in publicity
or promoting his work, he sets aside several hours for this. He was even
there outlasting at least one of the journalists who went to bed
leaving old Zumthor still up working the room. That is what it takes to
make it in the starchitect business.
Any publicist will tell you that the first rule of making a name for your self or managing your image is:
Be nice to people, but bend over backwards for the press.
When
Zumthor turns up, he turns on his charm, prepared to wine and dine, he
is patient, he listens, generous with the alcohol, and he was sure to
extend an invitation to those willing to break away from their scheduled
itinerary to come and
meet him at his office and see more of his work. And when a journalist
comes to your door with a broken shoe, you understand this as good luck.
You see the glass half full and you drink it; ie you see the
opportunity and you make sure to mend that shoe. It is as simple as
that.
The
journalist goes back to London and write about how nice and charming
you are. The best and most flashy, most advanced, most exquisitely
designed website with the most expensive graphic designers and best
marketing experts can not parallel the publicity you get from one
article like this: Plain and simple.
In the article, Baillieu also mentioned how Zumthor explained to the reporters why he does not accept architecture prizes.
No seriously!!...he did say that..I can’t make this stuff up.
This is a direct quote from the article:
Zumthor turned
up at the spa after dinner. All of us save a well known architect who’d
be sent by a magazine were rather in awe of Zumthor and listened dutifully as he told us the story of Vals, and why he didn’t accept architecture prizes.
I
asked Baillieu about this and she confirmed that he did indeed say
this: arguing that he believed the way architects garland themselves
with awards and prizes were a distraction. It is also alleged, she
continued, that he had even turned down a Pritzker some years before
accepting it in 2009.
This
statement was made back in 2002 mind you, and a man has a right to
change his mind, but to be fair a Pritzker prize and its $100,000.00 prize money can be very persuasive even for a man who doesn’t work for money.
Furthermore, (...and this is where it gets really interesting) it seems like even before he changed his mind in 2009 (like a great general switching sides in an ideological war) he was already actively assaulting his own publicly professed position: Before accepting the Pritzker, he accepted the Carlsberg
Architecture Prize in 1998, the Mies van der Rohe Award for European
Architecture in 1999, and the Praemium Imperiale in 2008 among several
others.
To this
day, I have not heard any statements from him reversing his position.
So I can only assume that what he publicly proclaims about his beliefs
and what he actually does are two entirely separate and unrelated
things: So
saying that he changed his mind after accepting the Pritzker is like
saying that Lance Armstrong changed his mind after winning his third
Tour de France because he told reporters on national TV that he doesn't
believe in using steroids. Zumthor has recently been named the recipient of The Royal Gold Medal award from the RIBA and if my assumptions about him are correct, I believe he will be accepting it in February of 2013 as well.
Given this information (readily available to all on Wikipedia),
Baillieu could have written a critical piece discussing both his
virtues and his conspicuous duplicities, but she did not. Put yourself
in her shoes for a moment; even the most hardened investigative reporter
would find it difficult to write a critical piece on a charming old guy
who went out of his way to have your broken sandals repaired: You would
have to have a heart of stone to do so. Besides, what architectural
journalist would want to risk their own popularity, not to mention the
backlash from criticizing one of the profession's most favorite
starchitect?
Still
not convinced he is astute when it comes to his image? Here is another
case in point. If you are a fan of Zumthor or just a person interesting
in finding out more about him or his work, you will no doubt have
noticed his conspicuous lack of a company website. If you are running a
company in this day and age, no less a Pritzker award winning
international architecture firm and you don’t have a website, this is
not a mistake. It is a deliberate statement about you and your brand. It
says I am not like other architects, I am above the fray, I am
reclusive, mysterious, I reject the mainstream ways, I prefer the old
fashioned methods over new technology, and as I have just shown you, he
does very well without it.
So
early in 2012 someone (an adoring fan I suppose) started a tumblr blog
dedicated purely to Zumthor and his work: An attempt to fill the gap in
his online presence. It was an adoring tribute of sorts to Zumthor;
flattering pictures of the old master and his works, new projects etc,
only Wim Wenders could have topped it.
After
some time, the blog began to gain a little attention from the networks
of other architecture blogs and became a bit popular. I used to check it
out every once in awhile myself. It was to my surprise that I noticed
some time later that there was a post containing what was an apparent
letter from Zumthor’s office asking him to change the name of the site
and not to further publish any copyrighted material without his
permission. Here is a copy of the letter below:
Dear Sir or Madam,
Thank
you for your interest in Peter Zumthor's work. This site appears under
the name of Peter Zumthor, although it is not authorised by him. In the
past we also found a lot of copyrighted material here without any
captions.
Therefore,
we would like to ask you to change the name of the site, so it becomes
clear who created it. And, of course, to not publish any copyrighted
material without permission.
You can contact me at XXX XX XX XX.
Thank you, Barbara Soldner
So later on, the name of the site was changed to ZTH instead of Zumthor, the words NON-OFFICIAL SITE was placed below it, and many of the images removed.
Now,
this is fair and well enough, as I said, any and every architect wants
to make a name for himself and its only natural that one would want to
protect it. Peter Zumthor however, consistently goes out of his way to
publicly make the point that he is not interested in this sort of thing,
but then quietly sends his image handlers out to do the exact opposite.
If he does not feel the need to make a name for himself or does not
care about his image, then why harass adoring fans who blog about his
work? This is not the behavior of someone who is not interested in their image or not interested in his own self-promotion.
So when I hear statements in the film like:
Peter Zumthor an architect not driven by the need to make a name for himself
I say: What kind of baloney is this?
That is an outright lie!
It feels like watching the debates between Obama and Romney where at one point Obama was repeatedly saying.
Not true Governor Romney....Not true Mr Governor....Not true Governor....Not true...
I think I need to do the same here
Not true Mr Zumthor....Not true Mr Zumthor....Not true Mr Zumthor.... Lets
be clear here.
I am not making Zumthor wrong for marketing himself. As
architects, we have to have our feet in at least two worlds at the same
time: one is the world of architecture and one in the world of business.
The
business side requires us to have strategies for marketing ourselves.
However we learn in architecture school that things like branding, image
making, self promotion, and networking are dirty words. We should be
disciples to architecture and focus on making good work in a bubble
and if you do that well, then you will be noticed, the work will come
and you will be successful. This is nonsense and Zumthor knows this more
than anyone else. However, he insists on saying these ridiculous things
at every opportunity he gets and thereby perpetuating these destructive myths.
What's
more, he is in a position of influence; he has a huge following of
young adoring fans who swears by his every word. They believe this stuff
and so they go out starting off their young careers believing that this
is how the world works. Its difficult enough to make a living as an
architect, and with the backdrop of the financial crisis it's even
worse, so feeding this nonsense to young folks in my view, is a little
cruel.
As
I have said before on this blog. I like Zumthor’s work a lot, but when
he comes out with these promotional antics claiming that he is not a
networker, he is not into self-promotion, he does not work for money, and that he does not accept architectural awards, I come away with a little less respect for him as a person every time.
In
a way, he is kind of the opposite of Phillip Johnson: Johnson would
come right out and say stuff like “I am a whore” when talking about what
he does as an architect: Implying that we architects are all whores. It
doesn’t sound very nice. It is offensive,
its not an easy self-image to digest. But in a way he was being honest,
he was acknowledging a reality that as architects we sometimes find
ourselves in positions where we have to make ethical compromises in
order to keep ourselves afloat.
To
me there is a certain humanity in that, it acknowledges that there is a
working conscience in there somewhere. A flawed human-being with a
conscience, I can identify with. I personally don’t find much to admire
in Johnson's work, but even as a next to raving fan of Zumthor’s work, I
have to say I have much more respect for Johnson as a person than I do
for Zumthor, because he is much more honest.
Here
is a picture of Zumthor NOT POSING for a promotional press photo that
will NOT contribute to his image making or publicity whatsoever. Zumthor
only chose to accept the commission to design a pavilion for the highly
publicized spectacle-event called the Serpentine Gallery because...he
had one too many Dos Equis after the happy hour.
That a body of work as small as ours is
recognized in the professional world makes us feel proud and should
give much hope to young professionals that if they strive for quality in
their work it might become visible without any special promotion.
Yet another promotional film, this time from cultural-celebrity video-biographer Micheal Blackwood. A copy of this piece of architectural heritage can be yours for only $115.00 and can be ordered directly online at Blackwood's webstore.
Whenever I talk with people about becoming a famous architect, and I ask "well what do you think it takes to become famous?" The responses are wide and varied. Here are some common responses I get:
I suppose you to have to be fortunate enough to be friends with already famous people to begin with.
When reading the history of famous architects a common thread is either that they were [lucky enough to be] born rich (like P. johnson...kurokawa, fumihiko maki, shigeru ban, and I hear rumours about Ando too...), had a good teaching job to live off of, or a combination of both.
You have to be lucky; meaning being in the right place at the right time and yeah talent helps too
...and the list goes on and on.
If you haven't already noticed, the one common denominator in all these statements is the magic ingredient of luck.
So what is luck anyway?
Below are some common definitions.
Luck: an unknown and unpredictable phenomenon that causes an event to result one way rather than another.
Luck: the force that seems to operate for good or ill in a person's life, as in shaping circumstances, events, or opportunities
From Wikipedia:
For a lot of people, Luck is a belief that good or bad fortune in life is caused by accident or chance, and attributed by some to reasons of faith or superstition, which happens beyond a person's control.
Buddhism teaches about karmma; the idea of moral causality; that all things which happen must have a cause, either material or spiritual, and do not occur due to chance or fate.
Followers of Christianity and Islam believe in the will of a supreme being directing the universe and the affairs of humankind with wise benevolence, theologily refered to as Divine Providence. It varies greatly from one person to another; however, most acknowledge providence as at least a partial, if not complete influence on luck. The concept of "Divine Grace" as it is described by believers closely resembles what is referred to as "luck" by others. One such activity is prayer, a religious practice in which this belief is particularly strong.
Others associate luck with a strong sense of superstition, that is, a belief that certain taboo or blessed actions will influence how fortune favors them for the future.
These are all well and good. You can believe what you want. I am not here to question your faith or tell you what to believe. But I can share with you what I believe is a useful perspective on luck. There is an old Babylonian saying that goes something like this:
If a man is lucky, bound his hands and feet together and cast him in the Tigris and he will swim out with a fish in his mouth for supper
To me luck is largely a matter of perception. What I mean is that the situations that we find ourselves in are not essentially fortunate or unfortunate, but rather just situations with various levels of potentials, opportunities and limitations. Each situation comes with its own unique set of circumstances that either limit or open up potentials for what we want or where we want to go. It is up to us to find the fortune and opportunities and act on them. My good man that was lucky enough to be thrown in the Tigris in such a ghastly fashion simply discovered that his situation presented him with a good opportunity to go fishing for dinner. Rather than accepting his predicament as bad luck, he saw the potential in the it and most importantly he took action.
Obviously this is just a mythic tale, but like most mythic tales it offers a simple lesson.
Luck in not just seeing the glass half full, it is also taking action; not just seeing the potential but using it. After all, seeing the glass as half full is ultimately meaningless if you don't drink what's in it at some point. Isn't it?
Being an optimist alone isn’t enough; being able to see all the goodness, potential and opportunities around you and then not taking advantage of them has nothing to do with luck. It has to do with day dreaming. It is not really any different from a pessimist with no imagination or who sees only limitations in his situation and subsequently does nothing. The old Babylonian Houdini would not be considered lucky if he figured out how to escape and catch a fish but just never got around to doing it, would he?
To be truly lucky one not only has to be optimistic enough to recognize the opportunities but also courageous enough to act on them while they last. Not only that, one has to do this constantly. This is the way of the famous architect.
I can not count the amount of times where I encounter architects who after seeing the newly published project of a famous architect and saying:
"oh snaps! I had that very same idea"
Well then I ask you "why didn't you act?"...
"why didn't you follow through and realize it?"
The answer is in the question:
"what's the difference between you and the famous architect?"
Is it because he is lucky and you are not?
-or-
Is it because he was able to see the opportunity andput in the work to realize it while you did not?
Is it because he has the ability to see the greenness of the grass on his side of the fence while you can only see the weeds on yours?
It comes in the form of statement like:
"Oh of-course they can, they are lucky because they have a team of apprentices slaving away at their office for free and I have none."
-or-
oh he has connections and I don't.
The way I see it, the optimist who sees the opportunities and potentials around him and do nothing about it is worse than a pessimist:
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