For the non-Harry Potter readers – this is a potion called liquid luck. It makes the drinker lucky! (Book 6: Half Blood Prince).
Luck. That elusive component of seemingly everything – where you work, what you study, who you end up with, the job you got, the place you live and so on. It is always relegated to a small percentage in the overall picture to egg on the go-getters that most of what they do is largely within their control. As I meander through life, this little factor which is sprinkled on every aspect of your life, venerated in hundreds of popular quotes and always essential for any sort of success, finds itself on a pedestal under a bright spotlight. The abundance of it or the complete lack of it is astutely felt, from the smallest almost inconsequential mundanities (“Oh, she got the last ice-cream in that flavor!) to the largest life-definining moments.
I find myself pondering about luck during the gloomy, rain-soaked, chilly walks with my dog. What is it? Is it a series of coincidences, perfectly managed and timed by sheer probability that enable a specific event to happen? Or is it a fleeting glance at the puppet strings controlled by a higher power that ultimately dictate your life. But then, what is the point of hard work at all?
You work hard to eliminate all the possibilities of failure, something along the lines of “The harder I work, the luckier I get”. Take an exam for example – you study hard to make sure you understand the syllabus and spend hours trying to work out all the variations of questions that could be tested. You eliminate surprises on the tests. Then you eat healthy meals, sleep on time and spend you time indoors (largely studying the material) to eliminate the uncertainty of poor health during an exam. You seek help and mentally prepare to reach the examination hall on time, trying to eliminate any last minute catastrophies. Then you finally make it to write the exam and do well. Now was that luck? One would say no way, it was pure hard work. But the series of events that had to fall in place on that day (you woke up happy, you reached the venue safely, your brain was functioning normally) are also staggering. So then, is it all because of luck? No again. Our definition of luck is similar to the ‘Act of God’ clause in an insurance. Shit can happen regardless, and that little uncertainty that exists in everything we do (since we don’t live in vacuum or on an island, winks) is actually defined as luck. Its presence in undeniable, and in my opinion, should not be compared to hard work.
But the comparison is tempting. It is easy to turn fatalistic, since luck ultimately plays a role. Does that mean we surrender ourselves to the thought that everything is pre-ordained and decided for us. Hell no! That is a dangerous and soul-sucking way to live your life. What is life without hardwork, play, joy and sorrow? As someone who abhors people who live this way, it is unfathomable to me that you could live your life accepting that you are a puppet, reaching out to soothsayers and their ilk to “predict” their futures. It is easy to see how laziness begets bad luck, because no effort will almost certainly yield no results and definitely no luck.
But what irked or baffled me are the situations when nothing was in my control. I didnt think they existed, and boy how wrong was I! I fought to wrest control over these events and when I looked at them closely through a microscope, I found small things I can do – the most important being deciding what to think of it. I may be very late to this party, but, I wanted to share this sage realization with other folks who might not have thought about things in life this way – the one control you do have is over your thoughts and that is very powerful. It can tint your world-view in the hues you want, suddenly finding lady luck sitting front and center where you thought she didn’t exist.
If everything above about being lucky was incoherent to you and felt like someone rambling, it probably is. It is Thursday and I’m exhausted from work, desperately looking forward to the long weekend.
But in any case, a little bit of Felix Felicis will always be welcome!
Life As I Know It 