Quotes

Many good things happen to you when you don't care too much about them. Many good things happen to you when you least expect them.

Last term, I had a course with a heavy course work. The competition was tough and the instructor kept mentioning that he will sort the students and mark them based on their rank. If I am not mistaken, he also mentioned that a prefixed percentage of the students will get a low mark. All of the 40 students wanted to rank among the top and earn an A/A+. I thought that being in a tense competition with your fellow classmates was a counter-productive experience. I worked hard, but I didn't overkill myself for a high mark. I got an unexpected high mark at the end. One of my buddies, who consistently kept mentioning that he wanted to "kick ass" in the class, couldn't really understand why I didn't have his competitive attitude. I do possess a competitive attitude and like to put myself under different tests constantly. I just didn't feel that this competition was productive. Anyways, my buddy told me once that perhaps my success was a result of my easy-going attitude toward the competition in that course. That could be true, because every other time that high marks have been important to me (the instances are many), I have scored unreasonably low.

This term many good (non-academic and academic) things happened to me when I expected them the least. For personal reasons, I won't go through the details over a public domain.

But I wonder: Is there a rule that asserts good things happen when you least expect them or care about them?