Luck is one of those words/phrases that seriously irritates me. It’s not like I dislike someone who uses the term luck to explain how they guessed the correct number of gumballs in the machine. Rather, I take offense to people who abuse the word, especially when talking about success.
I’ve always said that I’m a believer in the concept of luck = hardwork + timing. It even says so on my LinkedIn profile, so obviously it’s true. To build on that, here’s how I see it: if life was formulaic (y * z + t(s/1) = SUCCESS, fuck yeah!) then everyone would end up exactly where they want to be, and life coaches and occupational counselors would be out of a job. But, life isn’t so predictable that we know exactly which variables to manipulate — where to be and when, who to come with, or how to get there; in fact, it’s so complicated that it edges on unfair, stressful, scary, and overwhelming. Why? Because it is full of a wide range of discrepancies — positive and negative, both opportunities and hardships — that distinguish each of us from our peers.
What bothers me is to hear “luck†used in a way that almost absolves people from the weight of personal responsibility, which, to be fair, can sometimes feel cripplingly heavy. Whereas everyone knows that we each get our fair share of positive and negative chances in life, it seems that we forget how much of our own fortune stems from what we do.
When a chance comes my way, it will hopefully be met with preparation, thereby creating opportunity. But, that same chance could come my way only to be met with ill-preparedness, laziness, or a bad attitude, and the opportunity is gone, sometimes without me knowing it had even presented itself. That isn’t good luck for one and bad luck for the other; it’s simply a matter of preparation.
So really, chance as a scapegoat is bullshit. Chance doesn’t determine the destination of your journey; it determines which route you take to get there.
I’ll make it personal (hopefully by now y’all are accustomed to me talking about myself) in hopes of framing my ideas about “luck†and “success†outside of the professional realm.
For July 4th, I took some much needed vacation time to visit my family in Naples, FL. As usual, explaining the trip to people who asked if I had plans was entertaining; it never gets old to see/hear their reactions. See,I have a pretty unique (and awesome) family situation… my parents divorced when I was two years old, yet here I am at 21, spending holidays with my dad’s, stepmom’s, and mom’s families.
Together.
Voluntarily.
Happily.
People always say “Wow, that’s awesome! Your family must be really cool!” They aren’t wrong — my family is really ridiculously good looking cool (Zoolander, anyone?) Friends who also have divorced parents offer some sentiment like, “Really? I can’t even imagine something like that with my family, you’re so lucky.” Again, they aren’t wrong — I am, in every perceived sense of the word, very lucky.
However, comments of this nature fall a little flat to me for one very simple reason: I don’t believe in a luck like the one they think I’ve got. I believe in a luck that means finding $20 on the sidewalk, or completely guessing the correct answer on an exam, or putting your hands up blindly and somehow catching the ball Sandlot-style. That IS lucky, because all you had to do was exist.
My family, our lives together, and the world that we live in, is not like that. If we wanted to be a functional blended family (albeit an unconventional one, hence my blog title), we had to make it happen. The journey required a lot of soul-searching, plenty of hard decisions, handfuls of sacrifices, and most importantly, a firm grip on reality. Wanna know what didn’t come into play?
Yup, you guessed it: luck.
Most of us aren’t so well-off that life just unfolds for us. If it does, it’s probably not as exciting or fulfilling as we would have hoped. At the end of the day, luck won’t cut it, and if you think it will, you’ll be shit out of it.
