January 13, 2012

• Wayback Post: Luck

  

   1. Are you lucky?  In love?  Financially?  Just how does your luck run?  Great?  Bad?  Do we make our own luck or does fate have a hand in it?  Tell us what you think about "LUCK".

  "Good luck needs no explanation." Shirley Temple Black
  "Shallow men believe in luck. Strong men believe in cause and effect." Ralph Waldo Emerson
  "Fortune brings in some boats that are not steered." William Shakespeare
  "Each of my days are miracles. I won't waste my day; I won't throw away miracle." Kelley Vicstrom
  "I'm a great believer in luck, and I find the harder I work, the more luck I have." Thomas Jefferson
  "Impossible situations can become possible miracles." Robert H. Schuller
  "Depend on the rabbit's foot if you will, but remember it didn't work for the rabbit." R. E. Shay
  "Luck never gives; it only lends." Swedish Proverb

  Luck Quotes courtesy of About.com

  Sometimes we're the windshield, and sometimes we're the bug. "Luck", like most of "life" isn't fair. I'm continually thinking about the possibility that perhaps some "good luck" will soon come my way. Lord knows, I could use some. I oftentimes wonder just how much 'bad luck" (or misbegoten times, ill timed choices, what have you) one has to have heaped upon him before he gains some "good luck."

  In June of 2006, I wrote a blog topic entry for my own blogring, The Internet Island, dealing with the subject of "Luck, both Good and Bad." I will replicate some of that article below. At that time, I was feeling flush with "good luck". I had been seeing Liz (The Queen of Swords) for about a year, and I was feeling as if I were possibly "lucky in love" at last. The relationship ended. At this juncture in life, I'm still single, so we'll have to see how lucky I really am in that department. What follows is the entry I wrote in 2006.

  (From 2006) On the main page to my personal website, AllThingsMike, I have written: "I've been blessed with a charmed life, unaffected by the tragedy and mistrust which govern most lives." Actually, my life has been no more charmed nor affected by tragedy than the lives of most people. We are all visited by luck both good and bad. I never really considered "luck" to be the result of my life's endeavors, nor it's cause. I believe, as in the Tom Jefferson quote above, that "good luck" is the result of hard work. I believe we all create our own destinies. This isn't to say that there isn't a sense of kismet or serendipity in our lives either. I believe, as do most people, that life is a series of both planned episodes and happy accidents, and of course accidents that are not so happy either.

  For the most part, each of our lives can be considered lucky from the beginning. I know this for a fact. My twin died in childbirth. It could have been me who perished. From our births, we are lucky to have survived the trip from the womb to existence. Those of us who make it could be considered lucky. I will explain that most of my subsequent life has been comprised of happiness, tragedy, and planning. Sometimes the planning causes the happiness. Sometimes bad planning causes the tragedies. I will always believe I'm the architect of my own existence, but I know too that serendipitiy has the power to change everything in an instant. If I survived a car wreck, or got through an operation without any problems, I could realize that luck might have a bit to do with the outcome, since I have known people who have perished in auto wrecks and on the operating table.

  I prefer to think I've received more good luck than bad. I'm not particularly superstitious. I have a black cat, and don't ever mind her walking in front of me. I do pay attention to Friday the 13th, and I don't try to force any issues concerning having either good or bad luck. For the most part, if something good happens in my life, then I feel as if I have it coming, and if something bad happens, I think I must have done something wrong. Life, like everything else in the Universe, is a mixture of predestination and fate. I don't think either one or the other is in charge of the situation, and the ability to live in a somewhat enlightened state is the ability to understand that we can think we are totally in charge of our own fate but that something completely unexpected can change that life in an instant.

  I've written before about my ex-girlfriend Pat and her insistence that she was going to be incredibly lucky. She spent a lot of money betting on horses and buying lottery tickets. She used to get incredibly upset when she didn't win the lottery or the horse didn't cross the finish line first. She was so positive that good luck would meet her with arms outstretched that when it never happened, week after week after week, this colored her view of reality, and made her life a bit of  a hell. I would go to the horse track with her,  but I didn't get that upset when I didn't "get lucky". In fact, every summer when the L.A. County Fair opens, I usually go, and the Fair has a horsetrack. One time a year, I bet on two or three races, in memory of the many times I used to  bet the ponies with Pat. I haven't won anything in this way. I just went last year, and I bet on three races, and tore up my tickets along with all the other losers. It didn't bother me in the least, and I had fun watching the races, even when my horse didn't come in.

  (From today) Luck, like most everything else, is a mixture of what we make it and what events happen to get in our way. Sometimes we are part of the events of history. Sometimes we "luck out". When my 11 year old car blew up, I thought no worse luck could have happened, but I got a great deal on a brand new car, and consider myself lucky because of it. Wouldn't have bought the new car if the old car hadn't died, however. 

  Every moment of every day, our lives are intersected and bisected by lucky and unlucky circumstance. What's lucky for us might be unlucky for our neighbors, friends, or family. I'll continue to believe, as "bad luck" raises on it's haunches and mocks me, that "good luck" is waiting patiently in it's stead, ready to visit on my life some more positive experiences. Luck just might wipe out my debt, give me a long life, find me a soulmate, bring me fulfillment.

  Etc. Etc. Etc. 

  It probably won't. But there always is, in each one of us, some slight yearning that our "ship will come in" and it will be filled with the good luck we so desire. The trick is not to expect this to happen, or else we will surely be disappointed when it doesn't. However that doesn't mean that good luck isn't right around the corner, and if it is, and we aren't expecting it, then surely we will be happily alarmed and pleased to be visited by the 'lucky leprechauns" of serendipity.

  Originally posted as a Kween of the Queens Blogring Topic Post: Edited 1/13/12

  • 11:19 am
  • 8 Comments