Originally written March 17th, 2006
BY EDWINCOONEY
What’s your definition of luck? My dictionary defines luck as prospering or succeeding through good fortune or by chance.
Luck is indeed a fickle companion! Seldom, very seldom indeed, is luck a partner. Luck, after all, is much too fickle to be anyone’s partner! It often seems that just when one is certain that “Lady Luck” is the figment of some lucky guy’s imagination, there she is smiling directly at you.
This train of thought occurred to me on Monday, March 6th as we all absorbed the news of Dana Reeve’s death at age 42 from lung cancer. “The woman didn’t even smoke!” many people said, “What awful luck!”
Mrs. Reeve was, of course, the widow of Christopher Reeve whose ordeal with quadriplegia was the result of a riding accident a decade or so prior to his death in 2004. “Rotten luck!” This tragedy was compounded by the fact that Chris and Dana Reeve left behind a 13-year-old son.
Many people wondered how such bad luck could come to such a beautiful, talented, wealthy and worthy young couple with so much to offer. Others, more insistent and angry, demanded to know why God would let such outrageous fortune happen to such admirable people as the Reeve family. I heard one radio talk show host assert that “God sure has a lot of explaining to do!”
At about the same time, 45-year-old Kirby Puckett, a man with a lifetime batting average of .318 and a member of the Baseball Hall of Fame since 2001, died suddenly of a stroke. My immediate reaction to that news was to think to myself, “Strokes don’t happen to men that young! What kind of luck is that?”
Kirby hadn’t always been “lucky” though. Following the 1995 American League baseball season during which Puckett hit 28 homeruns and batted .314, he was suddenly forced to retire after just twelve big league seasons due to the onset of glaucoma.
Luck is usually something we think of as being a good thing that should happen to the people we care about — as well as to ourselves. From the time we’re very young we verbally lavish it on each other like champagne after a championship game. Often we speak of it without even applying the adverb “good”. After all, everyone knows what “luck” is!
One of the nicest things about luck is that it’s usually cheap. After all, it doesn’t cost anything, not even money -- especially not money --- to wish someone “luck”—or even “good luck”. In fact, it is tradition for opposing prize fighters, baseball managers and even football team captains to wish one another “good luck” before the big match or game. They may not really mean it, but they do offer it!
So the question is: What is luck? For the sake of time and space, as well as my limited capacity for analysis, I’ll focus here on “good” luck.
One of my friends defines luck as being the place or domain in which opportunity meets up with good preparation. That’s not a bad definition but it’s a rather limited one. My friend is rather inhibited by his strong Protestant work ethic and his almost spiritual bond to every capitalist’s holy temple—the free market place—where voluntary and therefore calculated exchange presumably results in good fortune. His disapproval of gambling, which is both rationally and morally based, has to deny luck as being a factor in someone’s good fortune because he bases luck on the stellar qualities of studied and calculated preparation —neither of which are much present in Las Vegas, one of Lady Luck’s favorite playgrounds!
The real flaw in my friend’s definition of luck is it suggests that luck can be earned. I’m not sure even he really believes that, but being the splendid fellow that he is, he likes to think that good things can happen to good people even when there is no explanation for it.
The key word in the dictionary definition of “luck”, it seems to me, is the word “chance”. Chance makes luck both fickle and unexplainable--which means that luck is ultimately undependable and most certainly unaccountable!
Wanting luck to be forever present, another thing we often do is put a time expectation on luck. The only response one can make to that observation is that time-honored comment: “Lots-a-luck!” In other words, in order to be REALLY lucky, one must always be lucky!
Most of us see ourselves as being lucky only when something happens to us that is both unexpected and unusually pleasant.
“Uncle Ike got a hole in one on the golf course yesterday! Wow, what luck!” Some, of course, would remind us that Uncle Ike is a pretty good golfer! They might also observe that lucky things usually happen to good golfers more often than they happen to average or poor golfers.
“Did you hear that Cousin Harry won yesterday’s fifty million dollar lottery??” Someone surely has asked excitedly. Ah! But the real question is how will Cousin Harry handle the challenges that accompany his luck?
While most of us would dearly love to face Cousin Harry’s new challenge, the point is that even luck has its price—and it is often, very often, a much higher price than most of us realize. Uncle Ike must, henceforth, live up to his enhanced reputation as a good golfer and Cousin Harry must now wisely use his newfound resource, his wealth! Also, Cousin Harry must now keep in mind what’s written in scripture about rich men and the eye of the needle (and so on).
Christopher Reeve surely felt lucky on the day that he made Dana his bride. He simply would never have guessed that he’d have to spend most of their life together looking up at her from his bed or his wheelchair. Christopher and Dana Reeve doubtless felt both lucky and proud as new parents the day their son was born--never dreaming that they would be forced to leave him on his own too soon.
Nelson Rockefeller lived a luxurious life of riches and rewarding public service, but he also suffered a bitter divorce that was enough to ruin his reputation. Even worse, in 1961, he lost his son Michael during a trip which the lad was taking through the jungles of New Guinea.
The beautiful, the talented, and the rich have no monopoly on luck. My guess is that luck isn’t really a reward, but -- at best -- a fleeting grant of resources which we are expected by God to utilize while we have the time to do so.
Not all of the good things that bless our lives have anything to do with luck. Most people earn most of what they have or achieve throughout their lives. Ultimately, we explain the unexplainable by categorizing the unexplainable as “luck”… but that doesn’t mean that we’re the source of our personal and unfathomable good fortune!
My conclusion is that luck comes to us as a grant from God. Sometimes it comes to us as a talent, sometimes it may come to us as money or as a special relationship with a special person or set of unique people. Ultimately, though, my guess is that we’re expected to share what it brings to us with others.
Like our lives, luck is usually fleeting, but like so many of those intangible gifts from which we benefit -- such as creativity, tolerance and love -- its ultimate value is the power of its energy. Neither life nor luck lasts forever. What they have in common, aside from their often meteoric existence, is their source—God!
You know, something just occurred to me! Early in this writing I referred to “Lady Luck,” and as I think about it, luck really and truly is a lady.
“Lady Luck” even has a name. Her name is GRACE!
RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,
EDWIN COONEY