You hear people use the term “luck” all the time. I’ve always thought luck was a very random thing so it probably doesn’t exist at all. Do you ever describe times in your life as having good luck or bad luck?
Have you heard the phrase “when it rains it pours”? Does negativity snowball? My husband and I live paycheck to paycheck like many Americans do, so if there’s an emergency we’re screwed.
A few weeks ago our cat was injured and needed to have her leg amputated. We spent our last 500 dollars on the surgery and the next day my husband’s car broke down. We don’t like asking for help but we had no choice. We were in a very desperate place. Thankfully a relative came to our rescue.
That’s some bad fucking luck right there.
I bitch but I know everyone has stressors in their life. Bad luck didn’t just pick me – I’m not special. No one has good or bad luck; there’s just random shit happening all the time.
Is there ever a balance between the good and the bad? I see a lot of both in my life.
Do you ever feel luck and sentimental value are related? Like carrying a special trinket around and hoping for good things?
When something happens in my life I often buy something small to remember it by. Sometimes it’s a plant or toy; other times it’s jewelry or a small trinket.
For example, I recently submitted my art to a local gallery. They had a lot of requirements for their submissions and I worked really hard to put it all together. I finally sent the email and later that day I bought a small toy giraffe to remember what I was working on. I carry it in my bag for “luck” but really it reminds me to stay focused.
I did the same thing for some poetry submissions. I bought a toy lion and carried it around. When my art was at a consignment shop, I bought a blue necklace from the shop.
Probably the most meaningful one was a Valentine’s bear I bought when I was discharged from the treatment center last year. I came home on Valentine’s Day and I wanted to remember that.
This is a habit of mine. There are little things all over our house that I bought and have some sort of special meaning to me. It might be getting a little ridiculous. I think I have more stuffed animals than my seven-year-old daughter.
Even if you’re not superstitious, do you have meaningful trinkets that you keep close by?
How do you feel about “luck”? Do you use the term (even if you don’t believe in it)? How do you feel about sentimental value? Is it something that affects you?
It’s not luck per se but if I get cuttings from people I like they tend to persist in my plant collection. I’ve got a philodendron from one of my ex’s friends that I’ve had for over 40 years. I’ve got others from coworkers from jobs I’d left 20- 30 years ago . I still remember the people even though I lost touch long ago. I’ve even got a snake plant that was probably my mother’s wedding present 70 years ago. I’d be devastated if they died .
“In my experience there’s no such thing as luck” – Obi-wan Kenobi.
Luck can be a matter of perspective. When I look at my left leg, I could curse the bad luck that shattered it in 2017, or I could bless that good luck that I didn’t lose it altogether and can now run on it. Or I could reflect on the bad judgement I made that was the real reason I crashed, and bless the air ambulance crew, orthopaedic surgeon, physiotherapists and my own persistence for regaining most of my former performance.
Trinkets… hundreds. Thousands, if you count books. But none of them are “lucky”. See the first line. Some of them do make me feel better, though, the main one being my wedding ring.
There are a few things that I hold onto, but I don’t know if it is for luck or not. I still have my first Swiss Army Knife. I don’t look at it as luck, but I feel funny if it is not in my pocket. It was given to me by my Father in Law when Wife and I were engaged. I think it was when he accepted me as part of the family.
Wife has a red plastic crochet hook, given to her by her Gaga, her grandmother, in 1977. On New Years Eve, her parents had a party and Gaga gave her a plastic crochet hook, a ball of yarn, and taught her to chain stitch. She still has it. She still uses it. She doesn’t consider it lucky, it has no value, it is cheep plastic, but she is fiercely protective of it and uses it and thinks of her grandmother.
As for negativity snowballing? I think, for me, that is biased. If something bad happens to me (like when I broke my back), I, over the next week, remembered two other bad things that had happened, but they were normal bad, not catastrophic bad. So I think both luck and unluck are more observational bias than reality.