“What is fortune?” I ask the Web of Answers.

“The Fortune Society’s mission is to support successful reentry from prison and promote alternatives to incarceration, thus strengthening the fabric of our communities.”

—http://fortunesociety.org/learn-more/what-is-fortune/

Fortune is freedom; freedom is fortune. Only—

“A Buddha is someone who finds freedom in good fortune and bad.”

—Bodidharma

Fortune is the ability to learn repercussions of poor actions in a constructive manner. Holding people in jails teaches people how to live in jail. Allowing people to do nothing with their lives teaches them how to do nothing with their lives.

“Fortune cannot aid those who do nothing.”

—Sophocles

Fortune is the ability to be integrated into— to become one with the whole of— one’s society and community. Fortune is to feel accepted. However, most often in our society, fortune is thought of as monetary wealth; with money, we are instantly accepted in one way or another. Where and when goes fortune goes luck.

“No one is truly free, they are a slave to wealth, fortune, the law, or other people restraining them from acting according to their will.” 

—Euripides

“Fortune” can be read as luck, fate, destiny, karma, serendipity, chance, or accident. These are words that we have attached to circumstances where success or failure is brought on by something other than our own direct action. The action may be imperceptible; the origin of the action may be unknown. Maybe, maybe. So, if success or failure is brought on by something other than our own action and we are slave to the turns of fortunes wheel that keeps us from acting according to our own will, are freedom and fortune mutually exclusive?

“We do not know what is really good or bad fortune.” 

—Jean-Jacques Rousseau 

Blind, Fortune doles out gifts and punishments with no regard to person. Though Fortune cannot see what Fortune does, this does not stop the wheel from rolling! The result is seeming randomness.

“Fortune rules the affairs of men at random and, blind, she hands out her gifts.”

—Seneca

We are Fortune; we are the Wheel, and we are ultimately blind in to actions. No matter how much we try to see the world around us, no matter how aware we try to be of how we treat our environs, we are ultimately blind. Despite this, we are not freed from the responsibility of our actions. Blinded, we hand stars to others, blind. Thus we are bound to the Wheel of Fortune, and thus the wheel rolls on.