A bigger role than many want to admit.

People are happy to take full credit for their brilliance when they succeed at something, but less often willing to acknowledge the element of luck. The main thing I did really well at, and generally am recognized for, is my professional life. I am willing to accept that I'm talented / gifted / intuitive and occasionally brilliant at what I do, but there was a huge element of good luck to it all. For example, I stumbled into a couple of really good gravy-train gigs over the past twenty years -- plus another less enjoyable one where the client had the $$ to basically give me "combat pay".

Even if I took credit for all my professional accomplishments with no tip o' the hat to lady luck with respect to my career arc ... I'd be ignoring that I was born into a loving, stable, upwardly-mobile middle-class and ultimately intact family of origin, as a white, anglo-saxon, protestant, heterosexual male. I mean, what more fortuitous card could you possibly draw from the deck? If I had been gay, black, or female -- just not ONE of those things I listed -- who is to say that some virtuous cycle of good luck would not have stalled out and I'd be digging ditches instead of supervising the design and execution of computer software? Or given the extraordinarily broad range of pay rates in my line of work -- that I would have not moved up the "food chain" very far? What if I had addictive or depressive tendencies, or self control issues or incurable chronic health problems? There's a lot that "just worked" that I simply can't take credit for.

I think I'm a fatalist

Luck? None. Chance and random events? Major role.