St. Patrick's Day is the perfect time to consider luck, good and bad.
While people talk about the luck of the Irish in a whimsical, mythological way, you have to wonder if there's anything to it.
Ireland was, after all, invaded by the Vikings, plundered by Cromwell's army, subjected to a plantation system, stripped of its native tongue and suffered through a terrible famine.
It was, alas, a potato famine in the 1800s that drove millions from that country to America, where they were lucky enough to start over in a land of plenty and promise.
Bad luck therefore led to good luck.
Or was it just fate?
Rabbit's foot
I have a friend who has carried a rabbit's foot for several decades and considers it a good luck charm.
It was not so lucky, however, for the rabbit.
People have all kinds of talismans hanging around their necks, from their rearview mirrors, tucked inside clothing or hidden in their houses to protect them from bad luck.
Some of the usual good luck omens include horseshoes, four-leaf clovers, piebald horses, coins found heads up, numbers like seven, ladybugs, and the unexplainable tradition of actors telling one another to "break a leg" just before going on stage.
All of which proves they don't have to make sense. They just have to be believed.
Luck, it seems, is a state of mind, a belief that something good will happen.
Unless, of course, it doesn't.
You don't have to be a physicist to conclude that if there is good luck there is also an equal amount of bad luck.
In the old West, aces and eights were considered a dead-man's hand in poker. If a black cat crosses your path, surely something bad is about to happen. Or not.
Lucky charms are just that, charming, if not ridiculous.
Half a chance
And yet we cling to luck like a life raft in the turbulent ocean of life.
Mainly because we need to believe we have half a chance to be successful, whether we deserve it or not.
That you were born in this country to nice people who fed you and educated you and protected you from bad things might be, at best, a statistical miracle.
That you met your soul mate in a library on a rainy afternoon because she was studying and you were looking for shelter could have been a happy happenstance.
That you barely missed being hit by a bus because you stopped to help a little old lady pick up her handkerchief could be considered a chivalrous coincidence.
Life, it seems, is as fickle as a coin toss.
So be careful out there today, look both ways for leprechauns, and may the luck of the Irish be with you. The good luck, that is.
Reach Ken Burger at 937-5598 or follow him on Twitter at @Ken_Burger.
Monday, March 28, 2011
So much of life is luck
via google.com
