Luck-July 2004

Luck

From Menletter July 2004

By Tim Baehr

I am very lucky.

I broke my ankle when I was ten.

I've been plagued by chronic mouth sores since I was one.

I've been seriously overweight and out of shape.

I dropped out of graduate school.

I got my college girlfriend pregnant and had to marry her.

My career never really took off.

I've been fired and laid off.

My first marriage ended in divorce.

My home has been broken into three times.

One of my cars has been broken into three times; another car was stolen twice.

I've abandoned my religion. Twice.

I've been very close to being a chronic drunk.

My youngest son has Tourette Syndrome.

Both my parents are dead.

I'm in the middle of a lawsuit that could cost me my house and my retirement funds.

I have battled cancer.

Lucky?

Granted, many of the things on the list are chump change compared to the horrible things some people have gone through. But however long or short a list we might write, most of us could probably convince ourselves that we've had our share of bad luck.

What is luck anyway, and what does it mean to be lucky?

It might be useful to look at luck as simply anything that happens to us outside of our control. Good luck seems to award us with benefits we didn't deserve. Bad luck seems to plague us with pain and sorrows we didn't deserve.

What about luckiness or unluckiness? Are there people who are simply lucky or unlucky? Sure. We see that all the time. What's behind that? Is it karma, cosmic retribution, bad things happening to good people and vice-versa, manifestations of "Shit happens," or what?

What about people who make their own luck through hard work, attention to detail, ruthlessness, and so on?

I can't answer any of this. I just know that I'm lucky, often in spite of or because of some of the items on my list.

I wasn't always this way. For years I was convinced that luck was a more or less random phenomenon, and I came to terms with the fact that some people were a lot more and a lot less lucky than I was. And, gloomy guy that I am, I saw myself as less lucky than average.

But then I started noticing some strange things happening.

As I became older and perhaps matured a bit, I began to see that when I felt lucky, I got lucky. This had nothing to do with winning the state lottery ("I'm feeling lucky today!"). It had to do with a basic attitude that the events over which I had no control were neither good nor bad in themselves. In other words, they were neither lucky nor unlucky. They were just events.

These events could limit or expand my options, my freedom to make my way in the material world. But they could not limit my basic ability to choose how I would react. When I chose good luck, good luck happened.

I don't want to be misleading here. I am not happy or even serene when things happen that make me or other people suffer. Having cancer and undergoing the surgery and aftermath weren't exactly a picnic in the park. And I'm not numb to things that give me or other people pleasure. Having a fast recovery from the surgery and a surge of new energy was an unexpected delight. Seeing my wife and sons enjoy success and friendships gives me great joy.

But there's always this undercurrent of a sense that, in the long run, no event or series of events - lucky or unlucky - will define who I am.

Armed with that attitude, I tend to see myself as lucky, and I'm able to interpret many of my life events in a positive way. This is not optimism or a Polyanna-ish idealism. It's a kind of hard-eyed vision of my role in choosing to go forward no matter what and to be on the lookout for things to turn out favorably.

The flip side doesn't work out as well. When I've been on the lookout for things to turn out badly, I haven't been disappointed in my predictions.

I'd rather live the other way.