Managing Luck

Lent 2019: Day 40

How lucky are you? Chance acts of chaos - car crashes, unexpected illness, premature death of loved ones, financial troubles, terrorism, war, cataclysm - we live our lives through a minefield of potential disasters. We walk constantly upon the edge of chaos.

Can you want to be lucky? You'd think that no one wants to be unlucky. No one wishes bad things to happen to themselves. But do you want to be lucky? Consciously want to be lucky?

My father asks me from time to time, rhetorically, I think, "dlaczego miałem tyle szczęścia?" ('why was I so lucky?'). He most certainly was. Perhaps it's because he wanted to be?

Conscious willing upon oneself of good luck requires one prime ingredient - gratitude. This is something that I've habitified - twice a day, while brushing my teeth, I express gratitude for my teeth, my health, the health of loved ones - and then for peace, for prosperity, and then I wish good upon my environment.

Schrodinger's luck - until you look into the box, you're lucky and unlucky at the same time. What constitutes 'opening the box'? Getting safely through to the end of the day, the end of a year, another birthday, another milestone passed?

This is Ig Nobel Prize territory. How can you scientifically measure luck by any objective criteria?

If I'd have written these words at the age of 31, I might have thought that I'm a bit, previous. Indeed, I have been hesitant is writing these words for this very reason. If I'm mown down by a reckless driver while crossing the street today, or diagnosed with a life-threatening disease a few months from now, the words on this post will have been proved utterly wrong. Chance, I pray, is on my side. It is on my side because I consciously will it be so.

I'm lucky to have been born in 1957 rather than 1927 or 1857. I'm lucky to have been born with good genes. I'm lucky enough to have had a reasonably good education. I'm living in Poland partly out of luck but more out of conscious choice, I am lucky that Poland is in the best economic and geopolitical situation its been in for centuries.

The only way for you, dear reader, to see if I'm right or wrong is to follow this blog for the next 30 to 40 years!

Can you be lucky in your afterlife? The answer to this question will not come to you in this lifetime. Believe it so, and you will see. If you don't - an eternity of nothingness awaits - but then this prospect doesn't bother you.

This time last year:
Blossoms and pylons

This two years ago:
Weather bad, mood SAD

This time six years ago:
Bicycle shake-down day

This time seven years ago:
40 years on - Roxy Music's first two albums

This time nine years ago:
Twenty years, ten months, six days

This time 11 years ago:
Swans still in Jeziorki