byChrisWhite – 2014

“You’re so lucky.” Oh, how many times have I heard those words? Luck, that capricious sprite, darting here and there with no apparent rhyme or reason, plays its games with all our lives, good, bad, and sometimes downright peculiar. I have been told, with remarkable frequency, that I am lucky, ridiculously, fantastically, impossibly lucky. And, I must admit, I am grateful for every wild stroke of it.

I mean, I’m lucky to be alive, no question about it. I am lucky to have my health still mostly intact, even if the hinges squeak a bit nowadays. Lucky to be born into a family that could care for me, and in a place where surviving infancy wasn’t a monumental feat of medical odds. I am lucky that my DNA decided to cooperate in a way that my body is at least halfway acceptable to my mind. Oh, and there’s more. I was lucky enough to have a decent sprinkling of intelligence and a stubborn streak of tenacity, just enough to steer myself in directions where luck might find me useful.

I’m even lucky to have trapped myself a wonderful woman, my Emily, who, for reasons beyond my comprehension, loves me fiercely, even as I manage to leave dirty socks around the house. And yes, I’ve been blessed with a child who loves me back, one who shares my curiosity about life’s absurdities. I even managed to stumble into a decent job that pays the bills while others are struggling to keep the wolf from the door. A good job, a good family, and even a fantastic mother who’s always been there to remind me of who I was before I had any clue. And let’s not forget my siblings, wonderful, maddening, steadfast siblings, who’ve stood by me when others might’ve sensibly taken a step back.

To top it all off, I even once found a McDonald’s bag with five hundred bucks in it, sitting pretty in the passenger seat of a rental car. Now if that ain’t luck, I don’t know what is.

But lest you think it’s all sunshine and rainbows, I’ll stop you right there. Has everything in my life gone perfectly? Please. Of course not. Life isn’t about dodging the bad days. No, sir. We all have our share of challenges, disappointments, and those rotten stretches of time that make you want to shake your fist at the sky. But it isn’t the good times or the bad times that define us. No, we are far too complicated for that. We’re more than the sum of our luck, good or ill. It’s how we handle it that makes us who we are.

If I were a betting man, I’d wager that how we respond to fortune, whether the kind that fills your pockets or the kind that tears your plans to shreds, tells us more about ourselves than anything else. If the sun shines on you, do you strut around like a peacock, or do you count your blessings quietly? When the storm rolls in, do you curse your fate and fold up shop, or do you pull your coat tighter and push on?

These questions are not just idle thoughts. The way we react to fortune, good or bad, often sets the course for how we handle the next big decision, the next fork in the road. Because even if luck showers you with opportunities, luck alone won’t carry you across the finish line. More often than not, it’s what you learn from your failures that propels you forward. A person who never tries will never fail, but if you never fail, what wisdom do you have to offer when luck eventually knocks at your door?

As the old Roman philosopher Seneca once wisely put it, “Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity.” Now, Seneca wasn’t one to mince words, and he was right. Luck might crack open a door, but it’s preparation that pushes it wide open. You have to be ready when that opportunity comes knocking. You have to be sharp enough to see that sliver of light and stubborn enough to squeeze through it, even when it looks nothing like what you imagined.

When luck decides to show up, what happens next is what we call choice. It’s a simple enough word, but it carries a whole heap of weight. No matter how dire things might seem or how bright the prospects, we are blessed, and sometimes cursed, with the power to choose. It’s the ability to step back from the chaos, look at our lives, and decide what comes next. But the trouble is, luck has an odd sense of humor, and the opportunity it offers sometimes comes dressed as the very thing you’ve been trying to avoid.

But let me tell you, that choice is the thing that makes us human. It’s what sets us apart from the rest of the critters out there, free will. And that precious, elusive thing can be downright slippery when we’re too busy looking at life through the wrong end of the telescope. Sometimes the opportunity is there, plain as day, but we don’t see it because we’re not ready. And sometimes, doing nothing, being the kind of person who lets the river carry them along, is a choice too, though a poor one if you ask me.

The toughest decisions, the ones that yield the highest rewards, are called “tough” for a reason. So, how do we become ready for them? Well, it starts with getting to know ourselves. Truly knowing who you are, what makes you tick, what makes you mad, what makes you happy, these things don’t come from lounging in the valley of unicorns and leprechauns.

“To thine own self be true,” Polonius told his son Laertes in Shakespeare’s Hamlet. Good advice, but not nearly as easy as it sounds. You don’t find your true self sitting around twiddling your thumbs. No, you find it by throwing yourself into life, meeting new people, trying different jobs, making mistakes, and then making a few more. It’s through that trial and error that you figure out what works for you, what doesn’t, and what you’re willing to put up with.

And when people give you that funny look as you set off on some harebrained scheme, just remember Polonius’s other line: “Though this be madness, yet there is method in’t.” Madness and method, they often walk hand in hand.

Here’s the funny part: all that stumbling around, all that falling flat on your face, it’s the stuff that makes those tough choices a little easier down the road. Easier to make, mind you, not necessarily easier to live with. Because after that big choice comes the follow-through, and that’s made up of a thousand tiny decisions every single day. Every day, you have to decide to keep going, to stay on the path you chose. And that, my friends, is where the marrow of life is found, the real marrow, not that sugary nonsense they sell you on TV.

This very blog, the one you’re reading now, came to be because of a series of small choices, decisions I made, one after another. I love writing, and I love sharing what I’ve learned. I chose to write more, to put my thoughts out into the world, to teach what I know, however flawed it might be. And maybe I’m lucky, lucky that I’ve got a love for words, a bit of DNA that leaned me in this direction. But every day, I had to choose to pick up the pen, to put down the words.

Of course, sometimes I wonder if I’m making the right choices. I’ve always wanted to write for a living, but life has a way of throwing up roadblocks. Lack of initiative, lack of time, money, there are always reasons. I tinkered with my education, changed majors three times, and somehow never finished. That diploma remains elusive, a door half-closed, but it was my own choices that led me there.

Living on your own terms is never easy, and there are no magic unicorns to lead the way. No pot of gold, no jet-pack to whisk me to work. Maybe there would be, if some rocket scientist out there took a few more risks and tried something new. But that’s another story.

The truth is, getting to know yourself and making those tough choices, those real choices about how to live your one and only life, is the key to building your own door when luck refuses to show up with one. Life is a moving target, and so is happiness. The secret, if there is one, is to keep moving too, to keep learning, dreaming, failing, and getting back up again.

Because in the end, it’s not about being lucky. It’s about what you do with the luck you’ve got. Living deliberately doesn’t give you the key to every door, but it gives you the power to build your own.

And isn’t that the luckiest thing of all?