When I reflect upon the last 27 years of my life, I am forced to take stock of the various circumstances wherein I have been stumped by bad luck or placed favorably due to good luck. What is this elusive mystery, luck, I want to ask? Why is it said that luck favors one person and another person always seems to get the rough end of the stick. Luck is such a pervasive word in our modern vocabulary these days. Children say ‘lucky me’ when they find free candy, grown-ups yell ‘lucky me’ in ecstasy when they win the lottery and older people ‘lucky me’ themselves when their blood reports come out. So case in point is that the word ‘luck’ is fast becoming the most over abused and under understood word these days.
What I want to say is that, very often what one puts down to good or bad luck effectively just a sum total of the choices is made by a person leading to the specific circumstance. For example, the person who gets promoted over and above others is undoubtedly ‘lucky’ in front of peers. But that should not take away from his blood, sweat and tears. Even unconsciously, every single day we make choices that affect our lives. Driving from work, we choose to take a route from several alternatives. This choice may be driven by past experiences, hearsay or even just gut. But it is this choice which will determine how long we will be stuck in traffic that day.
Rather than sitting back and letting ‘luck’ rule my life, I would like to believe that the lives of human beings are influenced by an amalgam of luck and choice. I could choose to work in a job that gives me more creative satisfaction and work life balance than pay but lusting after the career of a high flying investment banker and calling him lucky ain’t gonna cut it. I could choose to go on a sabbatical when I had a baby and that choice could have had a detrimental impact on my long term career prospects. But blaming poor old “Luck” for that? A tad unfair, don’t you think?
At the end of the day, like the Bhagavad Gita says, we mortals have to simply continue doing what we were meant to be doing and just not be bothered by the consequences or its overall impact in the scheme of things. If ‘Luck’ is to favour ,it will favor the brave who make intelligent and informed choices. Making brainless choices and hoping ‘Luck’ comes to the rescue every time is just plain stupid.