Hayırlısı olsun !

Fortune as we know it today, may root back to the Roman goddess Fortuna. It was believed by the Roman’s that this goddess decided on who was fortunate and who was not. Everything that had to do with fate and luck was in her hands. It seems that this goddess didn’t particularly favor Machiavelli and he lived his whole life unable to accomplish his goals of being in a forceful place in government. This maybe why Machiavelli has very strong and mixed feelings/ ideas about fortune and what it has to offer.

Machiavelli believes that half our actions are governed by fortune, but no prince should rely solely on this. “That is, that a prince who depends entirely on fortune comes to grief immediately she changes”(pg.68). It seems perfectly reasonable to not let luck govern your entire life, one should be able to control some things that could happen but he also proposes that a good prince should know how to snatch fortune into his favor. “For fortune is a woman, and the man who wants to hold her must beat and bully her”(pg.69).  How does one actually control fortune/ luck? It should be noted that anyone could be as pre-cautious as they want, even as pre-cautious as the Byzantine emperor who built the Maidens Tower for her daughter after an oracle told him that she would die when she was 18 years old due to a venomous snake (legend).  The snake got in one of the grape baskets and killed the emperor’s daughter even though she was in the middle of the sea. Fate prevailed like it always does. 

Fortune plays a huge role in our lives every single day without us even noticing.  We are only able to control small parts of our lives with the decisions we make. What Machiavelli has in mind, if we don’t take his words too literally, is that by always trying to make the right decisions one can try to help fortune help us. I would like to end my blog with the Turkish saying/prayer that we use in every unknown circumstance and that also highlights the importance of fate/fortune in our lives: “Hayırlısı olsun !”