>Gods exist and they determine your fate
Then it is the God of Fortune (luck) that determines your fate.
>A single God exists
Then your fate is whatever God wills it to be; what fate you get is pure chance.
>Regardless if Gods exist, fate is not up to chance and can be changed through human will
Then your will is at battle with all the humans that have existed, exist, and will exist: forming a complicated, entangled network over the planet that generates a system of luck.
Life, then, is all about luck: standing at the right place, at the right time - with the right thoughts in mind - is not in your control. Some elite get diseased and die young while some bums that live in filth die of old age. The poor can be happy despite their circumstances; the rich can be miserable despite their circumstances. The world is inherently a system of chaos. Regardless of what forces are in this world, variables that depend on variables that depend on the nth variables creates an unstable timeline that cannot be predicted or controlled. The manifestation of these infinite dependencies in our world is what we call luck. It just so happens that this manifestation is also the reality that we live in.
Accepting the previously said as true, hard work becomes our form of control over this system. However, it is double-edged. While your inputs, however small, may change reality in a direction favorable to you, it may also, at the same time, change reality in a direction that is unfavorable to you further into the future. A hypothetical scenario of this is that you get hired at you dream job, but on your commute there you get involved in a fatal car crash. In the face of infinite dependencies, it is also possible you don't get in a car crash, and live a good life. In both cases, the determinant outcome is out of your control. And these outcomes do not have to be so extreme as to cause death. A person could simply be born with the insufficient talent.
Hard work is not enough.
