I received a topic suggestion, which I was very happy about. After writing “How can you become a digital nomad? Or anything else…” I received this message:
Hali!
I will note, mark and wait for your opinion on the important thing for me, luck!
Because as I said, I am basically lucky, and I think that is why I have a great life.
Kiss
Dad
I have always felt that I was born under a lucky star: everything works around me, except for women and cars. A friend of mine once ironically remarked: “Great! Aren’t those the two most important things in a man’s life?” And I thought about it. For a while, I thought that at least the situation with women would settle down, but last year played a trick on me. Now, I trust that this year’s winds will carry me to other waters.
Maybe less luck is not bad luck at all, but a mirror that shows where I have unprocessed patterns!? Maybe luck means not only ease, but also the lesson hidden in difficulties…
Luck as a flow
Throughout my life, I have often felt that some greater force was watching over me. Yet, in the two areas mentioned, this flow has always faltered. Perhaps this is where my deepest lesson lies: learning to let go of attachment and trust that everything will settle down in its own time. Luck doesn’t always give you what you expect, but what you can develop from.
When I think about my own luck, what comes to mind most is that I am lucky in large part because I was given an attitude towards life, which one of my friends talked about in my article “Ash-baked scone”: “…I would like to highlight one thing, your perspective. I think the way you see life, the world and people, and experience them, is a very unique thing.”
This perspective is truly a great fortune. It has helped me through many situations in life. It has supported my struggles many times, it makes me grateful for being alive, for being alive now. It taught me a long time ago to appreciate the people and things around me. From the beginning, it has protected me from being able to rejoice in a childlike way in everything that life presents to me in moments, days, years – throughout my life.
Luck as a concept
But I haven’t believed in luck for a while now. Nowadays, I think that there is no such thing as “random luck”, but rather a causal connection. I believe in something that is the foundation of Buddhism, the law of karma: everything we do, say and think has consequences. What we – and I did too some time ago – call luck (for example, “I was in the right place at the right time”) is actually the result of our past actions.
Buddhist teachings often talk about accumulating merit: when someone performs good deeds (giving, helping, practicing mindfulness, etc.), they accumulate merit. These later create favorable circumstances in their lives. What others see as luck is, in the Buddhist view, mature merit.
I don’t necessarily want to identify myself with the person who receives mature merit. I tried to formulate this idea in my article “To be blessed by providence”. While writing that post, I thought a lot about how the concept of luck fits into the idea I talked about there. I think that’s where the idea that comes to life in this post at this moment came to me:
If we can equate the word luck with the expression being blessed, then I can already admit that I am extremely lucky.
I hadn’t even written down the last two words of the previous sentence when a friend of mine called me. We talked for 70 minutes and during that time this post and its topic came up. He once had a conversation with someone:
– I think I’m just lucky – he said.
– A big fuck! You were also needed along with luck!
I immediately thought about this conversation. Obviously, Soma and the things he brought are in my life. But, my thoughts still wind back towards being blessed. I am lucky because I am blessed…
I wondered what the mathematical connection between luck and chance could be? What we call “luck” in everyday language is often the probabilistic outcome of random events in mathematical language. As a programmer and a person who loves mathematics, I believe that there is a chance. In mathematics, a chance is an event whose outcome is uncertain but can be described by probability models. For example: if we toss a coin, there is a 50% chance of heads and a 50% chance of tails. Luck is more of a human interpretation: if the outcome of an uncertain event is favorable to us, we consider ourselves lucky. In other words, if the outcome is unfavorable to us, we are unlucky.
But the moment I understand that the interpretation of the outcome of things depends only on me, the term unlucky is replaced by the term teaching. That is, if I say that I translate the mathematical interpretation that luck is not a separate concept, but only an evaluation of the outcome of a probabilistic event, to a philosophical level, where luck is the giving of human meaning to “random”, I again cannot identify with the everyday concept of luck.
Beyond the definition
After this mind-numbing mental exercise, I will try to summarize what I feel and think.
Luck for me is nothing more than a blessing: the realization that every moment is a gift, and every difficulty is a lesson on the way. If I feel lucky, it is not a coincidence, but a proof that I am able to see the hidden gifts of life. Luck does not come from outside: it is born where gratitude, acceptance and learning meet within us.
I am grateful to life that I had the opportunity to receive the question from my father and answer it in my own way!
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If you enjoyed this story, you can buy me a coffee. You don’t have to – but it means a lot and I always turn it into a new adventure.
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