On Luck

I love grapefruit, so when I came across the idea of a baked grapefruit on Amy von Sydow's Instagram page, I knew I had to try it right away. It's delicious! I mixed 2 teaspoons of brown sugar with a few dashes of cinnamon and ground ginger and sprinkled the mixture on top of the two grapefruit halves, after which I baked them in the oven (350F) for about 12 minutes. I topped the grapefruit halves with greek yoghurt and a mix of seeds, nuts, and raisins.

I’ve never been particularly lucky in life. I’ve won exactly two things: A wall clock (when I was 12) and a flat-screen TV (when I was so broke that I had to sell it immediately). I tend to miss trains, lose gloves, displace keys, and I can’t seem to be able to remain vertical for long when it’s slippery.

My husband on the other hand, never misses a train, wins at least a dollar on every scratch and match he buys, and last winter, when he needed new outerwear, someone left a brand new Barbour jacket his size at his work place. See what I’m talking about here?

Let’s take the business with trains. When I’m running late to the train station, there’s this voice inside of me that says:
“You won’t make it. You won’t make it. You won’t make it.”

And while it keeps repeating this, I curse those last moments at home when I tried to finish everything: Doing the dishes, ironing the shirt, scooping up the cat poop, rummaging around my bags for a ChapStick. Sometimes I swear someone somewhere has made a voodoo doll out of me.
And then when I – naturally – miss the train, that same voice snickers:
“Well, well, what did I say?”

My husband on the other hand, walks briskly and surely to the train station, absolutely certain that he will make the train even though he is 5 minutes late. At the station he greets the loudspeaker’s
“The 10:36 train to Grand Central is running approximately 10 minutes late,” with a shrug and a smile. As if he expected that to happen.

How infuriating is this? I’m a sensible woman, I believe in logic. But my beliefs are nothing compared to my husband’s fatalistic optimism. I decided to take a closer look at this phenomenon. And now, after having studied his behavior intently for a few years, I think I discern what makes him lucky and me not. The first thing is that he takes his luck for granted. That’s right. He takes it for granted; he doesn’t beg or cry for it, nor does he hold on to it too tightly for fear it will disappear. While I fluster and hesitate and bring a truckload of angst to everything I do, my husband bravely steps out there like it’s nothing, or rather, as if it was all his to begin with.

Here are some other things my lucky husband seems to be doing naturally:

1. He doesn’t think too much (while I’m pretty much constantly in my head).
2. His goal is clear and he’s focused (unlike me, he doesn’t scramble to finish up doing ten thousand things before leaving the house, so while the apartment is cluttered, his brain is not).
3. He doesn’t come apart if faced with an obstacle (unlike me who have a mini breakdown at the station every time I miss the train).
4. He admits to not being smart all the time and by doing so gains in flexibility (unlike me, who is a bit of a smart aleck and therefore also more rigid).
5. He is optimistic (unlike me, who is rather pessimistic).
6. He listens to his gut instinct (unlike me, who was definitely brought up on the adage “use you head, why don’t you?”)
7. He believes in fate (unlike me. And if fate says “no” he just shrugs his shoulders and accepts it).

To conclude: Luck is yours when you expect it, when you believe it’s yours, when you focus on one thing at a time, when you keep a clear, uncluttered mind, and when you don’t freak out if you run into obstacles.

Let today be our lucky day. As James Dean said: “You gotta try your luck at least once a day, because you could be going around lucky all day and not even know it.”