Luck Factory

How do you define luck?

Success by chance rather than by specific action.

Have you ever met someone who was unlucky?

Someone who just couldn't seem to catch a break?

Stacking Ls like school chairs.

Eeyores.

And what about the other way?

You ever meet someone who just seemed to have a good luck charm in their taped fist?

My wife says I could fall in poop (her version is different) and still come out smelling like roses.

Which is a wonderful analogy (except the first part).

And yes, I do seem to fail upwards.

Always have.

I've always considered myself blessed.

Even when I almost died.

Especially when I almost died.

Because I have lived a good life.

Not an easy life, but a good one.

And I just felt and feel so lucky about it all.

In almost all metrics, I have overachieved.

Which is strange because anyone who knows me knows I'm an underachiever.

And if you know anything about me, it should be that.

I'm an overachieving underachiever.

Who is still walking the earth.

Hot dog.

Hot dawg.

Makes me wanna do an old man dance.

Excuse me.

[Dancing using mostly fists, shimmying shoulders, and some foot movement but not as much as you'd expect.]

Thank you.

Where was I? 

Oh yes.

I've always believed you can manufacture luck.

I've had a lot of luck in my life, so I suppose it's easy for me to believe it.

But I also view many failures as lucky.

Which I don't think unlucky folk do.

I see many of my Ls as standing for Luck. 

Lucky losses.

Over time, these Ls have turned into Ws.

And I either saw it right away, as it happened, or decades after.

And so I'm wondering now, if luck is more about perspective, about reframing, than about what actually happened.

Interpretation of events rather than events themselves.

Unlucky because you got hurt or lucky you didn't get more hurt?

Unlucky because you almost died or lucky you survived?

I am a lucky stoic.

Been that way, be that way, believe that way.

To out-kicking your coverage, instructive fumbles, and the infinite grace of God.

And to everything it makes possible, even the im.

🍀