Is life really just good and bad luck?
Hello thoughtful folks,
Think I mentioned a few weeks back during a post on the potentially numbing effects on television that I nonetheless loved Masterpiece Theater. Unlike some sitcoms that push me further into a catatonic state, I find the Masterpiece series always wake me up and get the sentimental writing part of my brain thinking.
I love reading/hearing/writing about the human condition because we so rarely acknowledge it in our day-to-day scrambles. At the end of the day or the end of our lives, we were first and foremost a human with a heart driving us – that fact seems to get lost.
In Any Human Heart, the three-part series takes us on a backwards ride through the up, down and around life of one Logan Mountstuart. His older self leafs through a journal and other personal items, each one triggering the event surrounding the entry that take us back in time to his two younger selves played by different actors.
One particular quote spoken by Logan stopped me in my tracks. He accepts that for him life is just “the aggregate of all the good luck and the bad luck you experience.”
I wonder about his passive approach to life.
Is it true? Do we just sit back and let life drive us? In all honesty, I’m not sure I have the answer to my own questions. For much of my life — certainly most of the times I’d label my “luck” bad or neutral, I felt swept up by something I thought I had no control of, like I was caught in a flood that just dragged me down the river of life as I tried valiantly not to drown
Then, things seemed to change. I thought I started to make my own choices, enough that I could avoid floods for the most part. Now, I wonder did I change my life or did my luck change? Did good luck bring me the inner strength to start making choices?
Clearly, there are circumstances beyond our own personal control – natural disasters and man-made disasters that drag us into their snares, other folks careening out of control. If we run into someone experiencing, perhaps, bad luck does that contaminate our good luck? And what defines good luck? Lots of money. Lots of friends. Inner peace. Comfort. Love.
Looking back on my life, I’d have to say that I didn’t have the emotional/mental wherewithal at the time to do anything other than what I did at that time. My perceived hellish twenties took place because I hadn’t yet learned that I had way more options than I thought I did. Ironically, I now look back at those times and see they contained way more good than bad luck, yet at the time I didn’t feel that way.
Perspective tends to be forgiving.
It’s easy to Monday Morning Quarterback myself and say I created my own luck. In some ways I did. In other ways I didn’t. Maybe luck is really something else. Self-awareness? The state when one reawakens? The knowledge that one always has a choice?
Now, that I’m further along the road of life, I can see I do have considerable input into which side of the pendulum my luck swings — at least the part I have some say in.
I’d love to know how you feel luck has impacted your life.
Thanks, G.
RSS
Hi there G.
I think that life is definitely a series of good luck and bad luck as well as experiences based on our own choices with a touch of divine intervention.
“Perspective is forgiving”. I like that. Time always gives a new perspective and a unique wisdom which only comes with age and experience.
I think that I’m also learning to handle my bad luck better as I get older.
Thank you for a thought provoking post.
Love Tracy.
Hi Tracy!
Great to see you back here. Like what you’re saying about luck being almost like a tossed salad of good luck, bad luck and our own choices. A wise answer! Perspective gives a new twist on what we’ve gone through. I’ve often wanted to return to my “hellish” twenties. Didn’t realize at the time their good features.
Appreciate your comment! G.
Wow, Giulietta, thoughtful and thought-provoking post. I’ve lived by the credo of “you make your own luck,” and yet when I look back, I’ve had a bit of bad luck, like when our house burned down. I do clearly remember at the time having a epiphany wherein I realized that asking “why?” was useless, because there was no answer to why, only the way I dealt with it. So maybe that’s an example of creating good luck from bad. If that makes any sense at all–its a tricky question, and a very profound one.
Hi Charlotte!
Sorry to hear your home burned down. Yes, it makes sense that your attitude transformed the seemingly bad luck into good.
Some things are completely beyond our control. Then we could wonder if the house had good or bad luck and we were just attached to it. Thx. G.
First of all, this is a wonderful quote,
“Perspective tends to be forgiving.” That is so true.
I used to really believe in bad and good luck, but I don’t anymore. I think things happen to us to give us choices or learning experiences.
To me, believing in good/bad luck as a means to explain what happens in our lives is a passive, rather than active approach to living. Also, even the times I’ve experienced that might be called “bad luck,” have taught me something. If I just passed it off as bad luck, I’m not sure I’d appreciate the lesson.
Well, that’s my two-cents to this interesting post. Thanks for making me think a bit today:~)
Hi Sara,
Now that’s most interesting — bad luck or what others might call bad luck taught you something. I agree with that. If my life had just been smooth sailing along, not sure I’d have figured out that I always had way more choices than I thought I did. Maybe I will do more research on the history of thinking we have luck and see what turns up. Always enjoy your two cents! Thx, G.
Hi Giulietta
You are way too young to remember a group called “Family” but they had a song called “The weaver’s answer”.
The song asked if there was a great weaver who had woven out tapestry long before we were born.
The last verse is….
“Lastly through these last few years of loniless maybe
Does by sight a shooting star fade from your tapestry
But wait, there in the distance your loom I think I see
Could it be that after all my prayers you’ve answered me
After days of wondering I see the reason why
You’ve kept it to this minute for I’m about to die
Weaver of life, at last now I can see
The pattern of my life gone by upon your tapestry”
Maybe the good luck and the bad luck is woven into our tapestry but until that final moment, as the breathe leaves us… we’ll never know.
Super post, well presented and well written.
Hi Keith,
Happy you stopped by to join us. I love the entire tapestry metaphor. It’s beautiful as are the lyrics.
It gives me another thought on luck, do we weave our tapestries or do they weave us? Based on what you wrote above, I now see this giant loom in front of me, half finished with some of my life depicted in the weave. At some point, I started going against the nap of conformist life more, so the design changed, got more textured.
Love your blog! Thx, G.
Hi Giulietta,
Another thought-provoking post. What is “luck” anyway? Is there such a thing or is it just a result of a bunch of actions/reactions?
My good “luck” has often had a downside and my bad luck, though devastating at the time, usually led to something good. I like to say that I have a “weird” kind of luck – almost at the bottom of the barrel, something totally unexpected occurs and I get scooped up again, or an opportunity comes out of nowhere at just the right moment.
I also watch “Any Human Heart” (love the writer, William Boyd), and there’s a moment when Logan says something like, “Good luck – bad luck,” foreshadowing what is to come. Another theme is how we are different people in the different periods in our lives; that would explain your changed perspective of your hellish twenties.
Hi Penelope,
Neat twist on the good luck/bad luck dichotomy. Not sure what luck is either. Tried to get a handle on it – an attitude maybe? Not sure.
The thing about so-called good luck is that everything’s on such an even keel that you can slip into a state of sleepwalking, which can wreak havoc in your life not too far down the road.
What’s ironic about back luck as you point out is that it definitely wakes you up to your own life and what you’d really like to do with it.
Maybe we should not fear our lives enough to try and stay awake during its duration!
Thanks. G.
I always liked the advice from my friend’s Dad … “Luck is when skill and opportunity come together.”
Hey J.D.,
I can always count on you to swoop in with the perfect definition. Sounds good to me. thx, G.
It’s funny because I wish people luck all the time; I have a lot of friends who are stage performers. But what I really mean is “break a leg” as I’m not sure whether or not I believe in good luck and bad luck. I think that there are risk, chance and choice but as far as luck, perhaps it’s just a word we use for things that happen that seem random and accidental. I don’t know.
Hey Belinda,
Good point about using luck to describe things that seem random or accidental. With life being one giant unknown, it’s hard sometimes to figure out what anything really means.
All one giant ponder! Thx for your input. G.