Luck: What is it and Where is it?

As a teen I use to watch Heehaw on TV and recall a song that had dozens of variations over the life of the show, but the chorus went something like this:

• Gloom, despair, and agony on me
• Deep, dark depression, excessive misery
• If it weren't for bad luck,
• I'd have no luck at all
• Gloom, despair, and agony on me

Have you ever felt so unlucky? I feel this way now. I have felt this way more than I’ve not felt this way. I just sold my house. Six months before I put the house on the market it was appraised and I was told it would likely bring $289,000. When I sold in this past July I got $173,000 and felt lucky to get that much. I moved to Oklahoma City and the third day I was here I was in a terrible car accident. The furniture was due to be at our apartment in a couple of hours. The ambulance took my wife to a trauma center; I limped to the apartment and waited for the furniture. I was too injured to give much direction so the unloading was poorly supervised. My wife was two weeks in the hospital, and had to have follow up surgery. For two months she could not get in and out of bed, or to the bathroom, or cook, so I became a full time caregiver, and was unable to look for work. We have slowly used up what little profit we had from the sell of the house, and I am just now able to go out and look for work. All this feels unlucky to me.

I believe in luck: how else can you explain the success of those you dislike? ~Jean Cocteau

When things are going wrong it is very easy to feel there is a dark cloud that follows you everywhere that you go

There is a lot of corn-ball, saccrine sweet stuff out there about luck. Someone told me that LUCK is actually an acronym, and it stands for:

Living Under Correct Knowledge

Corn-ball stuff gets passed around because there is usually some degree of truth within it, and this acronym is an example of that. When you have your mind right, when you see things as they really are, you tend to have a greater measure of LUCK in your life. Have a positive attitude, get your mind right, and you will be lucky.

For me, however, it is easy to go too far with this way of thinking. The Secret is a sort of New Age example of going too far. The Secret people call this the Law of Attraction, the belief that lucky people create their own luck by their thoughts and actions. A characteristic of lucky people is this sending out positive energy that goes out into the world and somehow makes its way back to you and brings good stuff with it. The Secret is that if you just have a goal, decide on something, visualize it, see this goal actually coming into fruition, then take action as if it is happening, really believe and expect everything to fall into place, and by golly its goin’ tuh happen, you betchuh. It is like a lot of Christian Prosparity Theology and Faith Healing goes. It contains an easy out for the advocates. If you have faith you will be healed, or get rich. If you don’t heal, or stay broke, all the advocates have to say is: Obviously you didn’t have enough faith. The Secret advocates have the out of, You didn’t believe enough, your didn’t visualize properly, you had doubt and that doubt kept you from achieving success.

Here is what I don’t believe:

I don’t believe that good luck exists because someone works hard and has determination.

I'm a great believer in luck and I find the harder I work, the more I have of it. ~Thomas Jefferson

Some of the most unfortunate people I have ever met have worked hard and been incredibly determined. Sometimes people who work hard and have determination succeed, but sometimes they don’t. Hard work is not the same thing as luck. Success requires smart moves – which isn't the same as working hard. Working hard can also put you in a place where you just miss out on other excellent opportunities, and by missing those opportunities you end up worse off. Hard work can sometimes result in worse luck, not better.

I don’t believe you can influence good luck.

Fortune brings in some boats that are not steered. ~William Shakespeare

Those who attempt to influence luck by The Secret or prayer, or a rabbet’s foot are sometimes very, very lucky. … Those who attempt to influence luck by The Secret or prayer, or a rabbet’s foot are sometimes very, very unlucky.

Depend on the rabbit's foot if you will, but remember it didn't work for the rabbit. ~R.E. Shay

I don’t believe in the concept that you have to be in the right place and the right time to be lucky. Of course this does happen, but it is a cop-out concept. People usually use this right place at the right time argument to justify their unluckiness. I wasn’t in the right place at the right time. In fact, I was in the wrong place at the wrong time.

I guess I believe that Good Luck means I and focusing on the good stuff in my life, and Bad Luck means I am focusing on the bad stuff in my life. In my life there is both good and bad.

• I was in a car crash, but my wife survived. Good.
• I had money from the sell of my house and have been able to spend two months caring for my wife and living off that money and being in a position to delay going to work until she was better. Good.

Do I focus on the Bad or the Good? That is what luck is, it is focus.