I believe that I'm a lucky person. However, since it's my luck, of course it has a wonderful sense of the perverse. After all, I've got such a sly and nasty sense of humor, why wouldn't my luck take after me?
Before delving into the intricacies of my luck, I feel I need to take the time for a (hopefully not too) lengthy discourse on what I believe in. When questioned, I profess to be Taoist. However, I came to that by way of Raymond Smullyan's book, The Tao is Silent, which is definitely more for the logically-inclined amongst us.
However, religion (or philosophy aside), I also am perfectly willing to believe in magic (real magic, not "Look at the happy elves!" magic) or anything else that suits my fancy. The trick, for me, is that I don't necessarily believe it anything. Instead, I'm perfectly happy to "try out" different belief systems and see what it would mean to see things from that perspective.
This, by the way, has led me, times too numerous to count, to be the "Devil's Advocate" for a position that I truly did not agree with, simply because no one else was taking up the cause. In fact, the most memorable experience like this was in college. I was taking a course that was titled Greek History. In reality, the professor would spend at most half of the period discussing the Greeks until one of a few things happened:
In fact, I must admit that I took this class solely for that purpose - I wanted to see what this sort of uncontrolled chaos would be like. The vivid recollection I have, though, is of one day, a discussion starting about nuclear weapons and nuclear power. To my surprise, everyone in the class was against both. Now, while I'm not so much in favor of nuclear weapons, nuclear power is a very good idea, but the battle lines were drawn.
So, being me, I, of course, became the class champion of nuclear weapons. This led to a very heated discussion where I thoroughly examined (and explained) the reasons why nuclear weapons were a good idea. This seemed to astound and confound the rest of the class, the teacher included. Finally, one of the students for the "other side" turned to me and said, "You can't actually believe all of that stuff, do you?"
Whereupon, I calmly said that I didn't, but someone had to speak for the other side. At this point, the professor seemed awe-struck, looked at me and said, "My god! You're a sophist! A real-life sophist! You know they killed Socrates for doing that?" Being unable to resist the chance, I responded, "Well, it's a good thing we live in a more enlightened age now, isn't it?" Opportunities for witty come-backs like that come so rarely that one just has to take them.
What does any of this have to do with my luck? Just that there are times when I'm perfectly happy to believe that I have very powerful, albeit extremely perverse, good luck. What I mean by "perverse" is that my luck will never provide what I don't need. However, whenever I have been at the depths of despair or concerned about where the next paycheck or job is coming from, suddenly things change.
I don't rely on my luck to make things happen. After all, I have to put in a good try to prove that things really are bad. Likewise, I believe that my luck is finite but renewable. In other words, if I use too much of it in too short a period, I will temporarily deplete it. But it's there and it's real. I'm not fabulously wealthy or famous and I've never won a lottery in my life. However, that's not what my luck is about. It's about keeping me safe and healthy and (relatively) happy. And, so far, it's been doing a pretty damn good job.
Author: ben@tmk.com