With a little luck ...

    

Throughout my entire life people have come to the conclusion
that I walk around with a 'black cloud' over my head. 
Some even think that if it weren't for bad luck,
I’d have no luck at all.
So I recently decided to look into this thing called luck,
and see if there was any way to get more of it
or simply enhance my own.
 
It seems that everyone has heard of luck,
believes in luck, always hopes for better luck,
routinely measures and places a value on their own luck,
has determined the amount of luck everyone else has,
engages in rituals to improve their luck,
can advise others how they can improve theirs,
but no one has ever been able to prove that luck really even exists.
 
Why do we need luck?  
It's what gives us hope when the outcome is bleak and dismal. 
It provides us with an acceptable reason when we're unfairly cheated
out of a particular reward and helps us explain away
any embarassing failures. 
Luck is what justifies the undeserved successes of our rivals.
 
Apparently there are degrees of luck,
and some kinds are better or worse than others. 
There's good luck, bad luck, potluck, blind luck,
sheer luck and no luck at all.
 
It can bring us love, success, fame and fortune,
or take it all away. 
It can help us narrowly escape death, injury,
and disaster or cause permanent pain,
suffering and devastating loss.  
It can assist us in getting away with a crime,
or lock us up for one we never committed. 
It can get us into or thrown out of schools,
pass or flunk exams, be diagnosed just in time
or way too late, land a job or lose one,
meet the love of our lives or leave us lonely,
and it just might be what gets us picked for a game of dodge ball
in the 5th grade or keep us on the side lines forever.
    
I've always believed that luck is closely related to fate,
as fate seems to be determined by how much and what kind of luck you have.
 
Some people say that we make our own luck.
That we are the “masters of our own destinies”. 
If that were true, we'd all be living in the lap of luxury,
surrounded by wealth, beauty and privilege. 
Who in their right mind would volunteer to be a passenger
on a flight doomed to crash? 
Or be selected for jury duty or audited by the IRS?
 
No … we are not masters of out own destinies.
Fate is a cab driver and we are just the helpless passengers
in the back seat who have to pay the fare when the ride is over.
 
I’ll tell you what I have learned so far…  
Some people are just ‘born lucky’
or always seem to have 'beginners luck’. 
Occasionally it's easy to see just how lucky
you are as in ‘sheer luck’,
but sometimes you can't see it at all
as in ‘blind luck’. 
There's the macho brand as in ‘hard luck’
and ‘tough luck’, or the directional kind
as in ‘down on his luck’. 
There's artistic luck, like ‘luck of the draw’
or the culinary variety as in ‘pot luck’. 
Some people enjoy action luck,
where you ‘press your luck’, or ‘push your luck’,
or have sportsman's luck like a ‘run of bad luck’ or a ‘stroke of luck’. 
There's present tense luck as in “this is your lucky day” and future tense luck as in “better luck tomorrow”. 
There's possessive luck like ‘my luck’,
‘your luck’ and ‘our luck’.
 
It’s been speculated that luck may have a will of it's own... 
"as luck would have it", or “if luck is on my side”. 
You may have even used reverse psychology
and told an actor to "break a leg." 
Many times luck is viewed as a character
such as ‘lady luck’, ‘lucky devil’, ‘lucky dog’
or ‘lucky duck’.
If you're curious, you can always ‘try your luck’,
and if no one believes you deserve your good fortune
they will say you have ‘dumb luck’ or ‘pure luck’.
 
Don't get too confident though. 
You may have been born lucky but there may come a time
when you ‘run out of luck’.

Fortunately, there are simple ways to boost your luck. 
Just ‘cross your fingers’, ‘knock on wood’,
or give a ‘kiss for luck’. 
Many people carry it around with them in the form of a rabbit's foot,
a horseshoe or a four-leaf clover. 
Who doesn't have a lucky number?
 
Just to be on the safe side you should try to avoid breaking mirrors,
walking under ladders or letting a black cat cross your path.  
If it's already too late and you knocked over the saltshaker,
you have a chance to negate the imminent bad luck coming your way
by immediately tossing a pinch of it over your left shoulder.
    
Yes ... Luck has always been a politically correct,
equal opportunity, all occasion greeting. 
We wish other people “good luck” when they give birth or adopt a child, go on a blind date or get married,
get sent to prison or go off to college,
get fired or get promoted,
land a new job or finally retire,
move away or move in,
buy a lottery ticket or a bingo card,
go off to war or try white water rafting,
enter a convent or get placed in a nursing home,
try out for High School track
or attempt to break a record
on the US Olympic Team.
 
It doesn't matter whether you are coming up to bat in Little League Baseball or The World Series …
we all wish you “Good luck!”  
  
So …
in the celebratory words of Clint Eastwood…

“Are you feeling … lucky?”