bad luck

I have been spending a lot of time lately thinking about luck, more specifically of the bad variety.

Luck/bad luck in some circles could be a throw-away term; an easy excuse for things not going your way, a dismissive way to skirt responsibility. The logical side of me agrees. I tend to think quite often that our lives unfold because we almost will them to work a certain way, whether it’s the power of positive/negative thinking, laziness and apathy, or how we seize opportunities. There’s something empowering in embracing this train of thought… I suppose it’s comforting to believe we have control over our destiny, that we can nurture fate.

The other side of me, and I don’t want to call it the illogical side of me, even though it seems to be the most appropriate counter term for logic, can’t shake that some stuff seems to haunt you or pop up over and over. How to define that, I don’t know. Is there such thing as good luck or bad luck? Just as someone can live a “charmed life” can they live an “unlucky life”? Is it coincidence, the law of probability, serendipity… all fancy words for “shit happens”?

Or maybe, “it is what it is”. Sometimes there is nothing to analyze, it simply exists and life is the random juxtaposition and intersection of many, many people doing their thing.

Carl Jung coined the term “Synchronicity”. This belief suggests that within perceived coincidence lay a pattern that connects events, that there truly is some deeper meaning that is out of our control. Some believe this happens all of the time though and we only choose to recognize certain patterns, the ones that seem most relevant or are on the forefront of the mind.

Even if life’s curveballs can be racked up to chance is there some divine mystical power that wills it to be or some age old superstition. If bad luck can be defined and classified as the “disease”, what drives it? Did Karma pave my destiny? Did I step on too many cracks as a child? There’s actually a never ending list of superstitions that will frighten you the point that you will never leave the house. I’m not looking for answers only to find myself a glorified shut in (so I stopped reading the list about 1/3 of the way down).

I am also not looking to avoid the uncertainty and surprises of life… this is what makes each day so potentially interesting. I guess when it comes down to it both sides of my brain might be right; maybe there is a little bit of right in each individual’s theory. I can only try to be a good person, hard as it may be sometimes, and work towards getting the things I want. In between all of that, when good intentions seem powerless, I will continue to look for answers to my questions… “what did I do to deserve this?”, and more importantly “how can I make it stop?”, even if they are unanswerable. It can’t all be so accidental. My brain may will some of it, as for the rest of it… weird invisible crap magnet, give me a break… just a little one, then you can go back to your black magic.