Lucky or unlucky?

Sunday 27 October 2019

Am I lucky or unlucky?


On face value I’m pretty unlucky, right?

In my mid-forties, when I should have been in the prime of my career and my contribution to society, my life was turned upside down by the onset of an incurable degenerative disease of the brain. I am a 1 in 5,000 victim of young onset Parkinson’s.

But I considered the question in a broader context. Am I lucky or unlucky in life?

In the course of a typical lifetime we experience many ups and downs. Perhaps these offset each other.  Average out. Net to zero. Or perhaps some people really are very unlucky whilst others lead a charmed life? And to what extent do we make our own luck? Over the course of my life so far, am I lucky or unlucky?

Ever the analyst, I considered the evidence.

First the bad stuff:

  1. I have Parkinson’s
  1. I have been divorced. I’ll spare the details but it’s safe to say I didn’t do much wrong and I was well and truly shafted on a number of levels. 
  1. As a result of (2). I only have one child, a daughter, that I currently see about once a month. I always wanted a conventional family but it didn’t work out that way.
  1. There are many things I’m not good at. I’m awful at pretty much every ball sport. I have no musical or artistic ability whatsoever. I’m not socially very competent.
  1. I had crazy Bohemian parents, who I think would agree were not the best role models. My Dad on the run for many years for a plethora of fraud, theft and other white-collar crimes. As a result, I had a fragmented early education, and was brought up with an attitude of screw what you can out of the system rather than work hard to earn living. 
Now I considered the good list, which is a little longer.

  1. I was born in a first world country in an age of unparalleled prosperity and peace.
  1. I was born relatively brainy in an age when cognitive ability is valued over brawn. As a result, despite my early educational challenges, I went to a prestigious university, I have a good career and earn a decent salary.

  2. I’ve been happily married for nearly ten years.
  1. I have a wonderful daughter.

  2. I’ve seen much of the world, and had many wonderful experiences.

  3. I was a good runner (before I had Parkinson’s).

  4. I live in a lovely house surrounded by interesting artefacts.
     
  5. I have some great friends.

  6. I’ve never experienced significant physical violence, or sexual harassment, or mental abuse, or been in prison, or been persecuted for my beliefs or been denied a voice.

  7. My parents loved me. My wife and daughter love me. The cat tolerates me.
So overall, it seems, I’m pretty lucky.

But, is it all actually down to luck?

Obviously some of these things, like being born in the twentieth century in London to slightly whacky parents, I have no control over. But most of these things, when you peel back the surface, can be influenced.

Take my first wife as an example. The uncomfortable truth is that the relationship had run its course and we should never have got married. And, moreover, at times I could be an arrogant dick. In short, whilst I didn’t deserve what happened, perhaps some of it was my fault.

As another example, Clara often says how lucky we are to live in a lovely house in a nice part of London and go on amazing holidays. And have cushy office jobs where we get to drink as much free coffee as our stomachs will bear.

I point out that these are all things we’ve earned. By studying hard when we were children, getting good grades to go to a good university, then landing good careers and sticking at them. For 30 years and counting. Working hard to pay the mortgage and to send my daughter to a good school.

This leads me to a Forrest Gump style metaphor.

Life is like game of Scrabble.

In Scrabble, you start off by drawing seven letters from a bag of a hundred. In my analogy, this is what you’re born with: your genetics, your parents, your environment. You might get a bingo (50 point bonus) on your first move. This is equivalent to being born intelligent, good looking, healthy, affluent and with a stable, loving family. Alternatively, if you’re really unlucky, you might get all consonants and not be able to score any points at all, though this is rare. You can make up your own dark life analogy for this one…

But there are 93 letters still in the bag (OK, 86 once your opponent has drawn theirs) and, over the course of a game, you’ll almost certainly get your fair share of good and bad ones.

So at first sight, Scrabble is a game of chance: who gets the best letters wins.

Yet it is remarkable how the better player almost always wins, regardless of the letters they draw. In reality, Scrabble is overwhelmingly a game of skill.

There is lot of skill in using and managing your rack of letters. There are often many clever ways to score highly with a seemingly bad draw, and to set up opportunities for later moves. It’s not always best to go for the highest scoring word; frequently its better to use up the bad letters and play the long game for a combination of good letters that will score a bingo.

And this brings me to the crux of my argument.

The real luck in life is not the stuff that happens – not the letters you draw from the bag – it’s how well equipped you are to deal with them.

In life this is analogous to being an optimistic, active, self-confident, can-do person as opposed to a pessimistic, passive, insecure, “I’m unlucky; it’s not my fault” person.

I consider myself to be very lucky, not because of the stuff that has happened to me in life, but because I am generally a positive person with an attitude of getting things done. To paraphrase an inspirational speaker I heard at the World Parkinson Congress in Kyoto earlier this year, when you get diagnosed with Parkinson’s, you make a list of all the things you can still do rather than the things you can’t do, and you focus on those.

Sure I have bad days, but overall I feel happier now than I’ve ever been. And that happiness is largely something I’ve made for myself, regardless of the Parkinson’s. I’m a firm believer that, like managing the Scrabble letters, you make your own luck in life.

Whilst I’m brimming with optimism, there’s one more piece of good news.

Some people are naturally more gifted at Scrabble than others, but everyone can learn to be better player.

And so it is in life too.






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