Timing isn't everything...

...but it helps. Geography isn't everything, but it makes some things impossible, or at least rather difficult. Money isn't all that important, especially in the land of instant credit, and (still) easy bankruptcy. Intelligence isn't all that useful sometimes, even in age where we worship the geek. Creative ideas that die in one age thrive in another.

The most unstable of all realms is the emotional. It remains, to me, unpredictable, moment to moment. If anyone ever wonders about which gender has an advantage in modern American society, the case is closed when you consider women's emotional advantages. By comparison:

*Geography is powerful, but airplane travel can easily render it meaningless. (I always have a free ticket in my hip pocket, just in case.)
*Money is a better path to misery than happiness. The best feeling money ever gives is when you give it away.
*IQ is vastly over-rated. Smart people eventually come to a moment of comprehension that their brain power is only as good as how well they can integrate it with their hearts.
*Timing isn't everything, but it is primarily important in the emotional realm. It also affects all of the others mentioned above. But, for love, to cite one example, to have any chance at all, the timing has to be right.

For love to be right twice, the good timing has to recur. Odds are always against that. But hope is not. No one knows how to quantify hope. Or explain why it lives on, against odds.