It's humbling to get older and realize how many of the ways that you think were you being a virtuous genius are kind of like that -- hitching your coattails on something you didn't control, getting benefit from it, then looking around contemptuously at all the idiots who didn't fall into the same good fortune.
There's definitely a place for really owning your mistakes and your successes. But the more common mistake by far, in my experience, is to misattribute them.
It took me a while to learn this, both blaming and patting myself on the back. I have retired friends now who blame themselves that they didn't prepare well financially, though their hard earned assets have been slowly stolen from them.
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This makes me think of the old, wise master who said, "Stay humble, stack sats."
But really in Sanskrit the phrase is/was "Sat Chit Ananda." Which is "Truth, Awareness, Bliss."
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Well said!
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