LUCK

I think I must have a bit of the luck o’ the Irish; after all, I have a good chunk o’ Irish in my ancestry, I enjoy corned beef, and I find Bono attractive if overly sincere. I have that bit of Leprechaun to me, hopefully not the creepy greedy trollish aspects, but that mischievousness perhaps and the ability to sometimes find opportunity where others may pass it by.

I think when most people think of “luck,” they imagine a winner at the roulette wheel or Powerball, or someone who simply seems to go through life getting all the breaks and perks. Luck, fate, chance, whatever you wish to term it, that something that everyone wishes they had more of, or even any to begin with. There are lucky and unlucky people, but the reasons for that are far less capricious than you would think.

So, what is luck, anyway? Well, good fortune, good things, good health, whatever you would consider the riches in life, monetary, social, something that brings you happiness and satisfaction, or helps you on the way to getting there. It’s a door opening for you, oportunidad de la ventana, but whatever it is, it never really affects only you. Luck is always connected somehow, either immediately or eventually, to others. “Connection,” a word I flog often here on the blog, is key key key. The connections you make in life figure hugely into your ability to have good things come into your world.

Hah! I’m not full of crap either, check this out:

http://www.cnn.com/2009/LIVING/wayoflife/03/17/o.how.to.get.lucky/index.html

Yes, I know CNN pulled this from an article on friggin’ OPRAH.com, but try to ignore that and pay attention to the core of what the article is about: “lucky” people are able to make connections to others in all kinds of different ways and situations, and they are ready to see, develop, and take positive advantage of chances and choices.

It sounds simple. It is, and it isn’t. There’s some prep work involved in being lucky. The first step is deciding that you actually really do want to be happy and have good things happen to you. Do not scoff here and say, “Well, Marianne, of course everyone wants to be happy you dingbat, wtf are you blathering on about?” “Ah,” I will answer you, “but that is NOT TRUE.”

Think of all the people you know who have whined and moaned and sighed ALL THEIR LIVES about what terrible luck they have had in life, how everyone else gets more of a break, how nothing is fair. Psst – they are getting something out of this whole “I’m a pissy loser who blames everyone else for my problems” identity. Making a genuine change in attitude and behavior is too painful, too hard, so they default to “Some people have all the luck.” Is it so hard to see that with that kind of attitude, you cannot even begin to identify what good things are or could be, and that others might not exactly want to connect with and help some sour sop of a person?

You have to have a different kind of mindset, a strength to be able to be open to the world and part of it, to have an awareness of everything around you, a hopefulness and willingness to just GET OUT THERE and see what can happen. And, critically, you have to feel like you deserve good things, and that you are a good person, and that you can take good care of anything special entrusted to you. So many people are compelled one way or another to bite the hand that feeds them, break their toys, close the curtains on the sun, destroy the perfect bodies they were born with, push the good away. So, so many. Good luck may fall upon them in one way or another, but they will find a way to turn it bad. Sometimes the road does indeed rise up to meet you, but more often you just have to climb up the hill, and that takes effort, persistence, and character.

So, on this St. Patrick’s Day, think for a moment about luck and the delicious idea that you do not have to wait around for it – you can actually create it. This is not a license to take off work today, get drunk on green beer, and lose your paycheck at the casino. Much.

Lene Lovich – “Lucky Number”