Someone who experienced the changing and flippant tides of fortune...

You learned your numbers at least mostly meant nothing, and seemingly learnt the valuable lesson of hardwork and luck (and a brain cell or two to rub together).

Maybe, someday you will be able to notice the rest of the drab populous, some of whom have no braincells, some that never learnt to work, or have never managed to have lady luck on their side, instead courting her cousins disease and malady, and you may regret your shortsighted and uninformed comment(s).

The road to riches is not lined with short term rewards, but with trials and many a tribulation, hardly any of it deserved...

> The road to riches is not lined with short term rewards, but with trials and many a tribulation, hardly any of it deserved...

I'd say it's both. It's like a simple board game[0], where you race on a line of steps, and the line is littered with bonuses and penalties, and each turn you move along according to the roll of the dice. A couple lucky rolls, you can be half-way to finish line in few turns. A couple unlucky rolls, and you quit playing, or plain lose to your lucky friend. If you somehow avoid both the bonuses and penalties, well the line is long and the game is fucking dull and you'll probably get bored half-way.

(Bonus point for making the line into a loop, so the game can take arbitrarily long, and initial advantage grows superlinearly, making the game beyond boring, a source of real-life conflicts between friends and families. Yes, I believe that game is called Monopoly.)

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[0] - Like the ones we used to play as kids, not the modern Board Games that Board Gamers love to play at social events and Board Game Cafes.