Lucky

I know when most people think of being lucky they think of something good they didn't expect. Probably for the same reason most gamblers play the "pass" line in craps and most stock investors don't "short" the stock market, luck is something the majority chooses to believe only happens in a good way.  In fact, Webster's defines the word "lucky" as "having good luck".  But there is another kind of luck and it gets doled out in equal amounts, I presume.  We are taught that in our universe, for every action there is an opposite and equal reaction, according to Sir Isaac Newton and his law of motion.  How this translates into the application of luck for any given person may not be so definable or applied in the same way but sometimes I wonder.  Do good and bad luck accrue in equal amounts to everyone?  Or, does the totality of bad luck get offset by good luck in balancing the universe without respect to any individual?

You can't measure luck; at least I don't think you can.  If it's my bad luck that my TV blew up and cost me $500 to be repaired does that get offset by a single $2 winning lotto ticket?  After all, its one bad luck event and then one good. Or could I expect to have an equal amount of winning lottery tickets over my lifetime to offset the cost of the TV repair?  It's a ridiculous concept, I agree, trying to balance a TV repair with winning lotto tickets but we make these kinds of bargains with ourselves continuously.

Luck has been defined by some as "when preparedness meets opportunity" in trying to describe what it's like when you, perhaps, make your own luck.  Now that's not really luck based on that definition, is it?  But luck is defined in the eye of the beholder.  Consider a baseball game where one father's son is pitching and different father's son is the batter.  Both players are among the best on their respective teams.  In the last inning, the batter strikes out looking at the game's final pitch.  The father of the batter that struck out could rationalize that the pitcher got "lucky" sneaking a fastball by his accomplished son but I doubt the pitcher's father would see it the same way; he would perceive that the strikeout was the product of years of playing catch with his son in the backyard, thousands of dollars of private pitching lessons and hard work and dedication on the part of his offspring.

Is it luck that is in play when a young person dedicates himself to their studies and then gets a scholarship to a prestigious university?  Some may perceive it to be so but I doubt the young student would see it that way.  I suppose luck is one of the terms we use to attempt to explain that which is unexplainable, in the mind of the individual.  Certain events take place in our lives and since we are unable to conjure the reason we can only rationalize that they are the result of good luck or perhaps bad.

My own challenges these last few years, as the readers of these pages can understand, find me debating the relative lucky quotient in my life.  Foremost on my luck scorecard:  I developed Lymphoma in 1998 (bad luck) but I was cured (good luck).  My son, Geoff, developed Hodgkin Disease in 2007 (bad luck) but was thought to be cured in 2008 (good luck).  In 2010 Geoff died from a rapidly developing Lymphoma that was undiagnosed (really, really bad luck).  Later that same year I was diagnosed with Squamous Cell Carcinoma in my tongue (bad luck) but I have been pronounced "cured" after major surgery and an uneventful recovery (good luck).  Try as I might, I am unable to find or understand the reason these things have occurred so they must be attributable to luck;  It would be a relief to be able to think so but, alas, it's not the way my brain works.  I'm going to have to figure it all out.