The Little Ways That Encourage Good Fortune
by William Stafford
Wisdom is having things right in your life
and knowing why.
If you do not have things right in your life
you will be overwhelmed:
you may be heroic, but you will not be wise.
If you have things right in your life
but do not know why,
you are just lucky, and you will not move
in the little ways that encourage good fortune.
The saddest are those not right in their lives
who are acting to make things right for others:
they act only from the self—
and that self will never be right:
no luck, no help, no wisdom.
William Stafford, “The Little Ways That Encourage Good Fortune” from Ask Me: 100 Essential Poems (Graywolf Press, 2014). Copyright © 1973, 2014 by William Stafford and the Estate of William Stafford. Used with the permission of The Permissions Company, LLC, on behalf of Kim Stafford
The Writers Almanac: 1/22/22
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