Wit and Wisdom
by Beth Broderick
LUCK
The force that seems to operate for good or ill in a person’s life, as in shaping circumstances, events, or opportunities.
With my luck I’ll probably get pneumonia.
Good fortune; advantage, or success, considered as the result of chance.
He had no luck finding work.
A combination of circumstances, events, etc., operating by chance to bring good or ill to a person.
She’s had nothing but bad luck all year.
Some object on which good fortune is supposed to depend.
This rabbit’s foot is my luck.
I have written about luck before. It is a concept that confounds me. I wrestle with the idea of it, with the way that, good or bad, it is present in our lives.
I have an old friend who has, for most of her lifetime, perceived the people around her as lucky, or at least luckier than her. She has a deep envy of people who are, or were, born into money. This used to hurt my feelings.
“J, I have made it entirely on my own, supported myself all of these years, and built a decent retirement portfolio to boot. Why do you feel that the folks from silver spoon crowd are superior to me … to us?”
Well, not entirely on my own. I had a lot of help from friends in the early years and, even with a total of eight kids to support, my dad found a way to bail me out here and there. Almost no one is successful “on their own.” There were agents who believed in me and casting directors who went to bat on my behalf. There was my sister, who encouraged me and was ever by my side. J was in and out of my life as our pursuits took us to different locales and communities, but she was also a source of support.
J was a scrapper like me. We came from households held together with spit and sealing wax by single mothers. J’s mom craved attention from men; she was a looker and lived to attract the male gaze. She married four times, and when she was on her own, she shuffled men in and out of her girls’ lives on a constant rotation, with the single-minded intent of landing yet another spouse.
My mom craved Scotch and menthol cigarettes and was a mixed bag of feelings when it came to men. Her hatred of them just barely edged out her fear of being alone. She had her reasons.
Was I unlucky to be raised in a chaotic household where rage and violence often won the day? Or was I lucky to be in an environment where there were no rules to speak of that could be broken? There was freedom in that, and it served me well, so I would have to say that it’s a tie.
J excelled in school, and I somehow sailed through, in spite of my notorious poor attendance. We both wanted out of that school and that town, were driven to escape our crazy childhoods.
J ended up with a husband who was a whiz in finance, and they lived a very high lifestyle together, but it was never good enough for her. They ran in circles of folks who were to the manor born, who were effortlessly wealthy, and it burned her up.
She couldn’t explain it, but she felt strongly that the rich are chosen somehow, are divinely delivered to this earthly plane through a great giant granting of good fortune. She was certain that she had been gypped by the Gods. In spite of means, which offered her lovely housing and exposure to fine things like great restaurants and ease of travel, she felt betrayed.
I never understood it.
A DIFFERENT LEDGER.
I don’t think of fortune as related solely to financial wherewithal. I have had the “good fortune” to sustain a long career, to make and maintain decades-long friendships. To be housed in a body that functions pretty well. Even the crazy disease that I cope with feels like the luck of the draw for me. Everyone my age is dealing with some form of malady. I got dealt psoriatic arthritis, which will surely cripple me down the line, but for now is mostly just painful. Pain is no match for my mulish determination, barely puts a dent in it. I have friends dealing with much worse, so I will willingly, if not happily, take the pain.
“Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity.”
Attributed to the Roman philosopher Seneca.
Appropriated by Oprah Winfrey.
Seneca is, somewhere, smiling about that.
That’s the thing about luck; it is all around us and also in short supply.
We are lucky to be living in an era of relative ease. Amazon makes shopping a breeze; transportation is available in a dazzling array of forms. Most of us have cars, but can also avail ourselves of scooters and rent bikes and buses and trains and Uber and Lyft and flights to anywhere a person can think of wanting to go. There are superhighways and Big Box stores and all manner of entertainment delivered to us at lightning speed, wherever we are, whenever we want it. We are offered a dazzling array of choices and cradled by convenience.
We are unlucky enough to have lived in recent times through a recession, a pandemic, wild and unprecedented catastrophic weather events. Gun violence is the leading cause of death for children. Children. We are bombarded with a 24 hour news cycle that assaults our nervous systems and disturbs our sleep. We are enduring a political climate that is off-course, unstable, and downright ugly. The future feels impossible to predict.
I was at dinner with old friends a while back. Jonathan and Stacy had a long, successful marriage and two brilliant and beautiful kids. The ALS that would claim her life had begun to manifest in Stacy’s speech, and her gait was unsteady, but she was buoyant and glowing. We were engaged in a lively conversation after a good meal. In earlier days, we would wrap up with bedtime stories for the kids and a nightcap for the adults once the dishes were done. The kids had by then grown up, and we all stayed at the table after it was cleared. We had decided we would engage in a rousing round of Bananagrams. Jonathan went to get the game, and Stacy made her way to the bathroom, where she lost balance and went down with a thud, striking her head. When we retrieved her and determined that she was okay, we gathered around and prepared to play. Her son put his head on the table and took a deep breath.
“I think we are the luckiest unlucky people who ever lived.” he said.
“Yes.” I said as I put my arm around his shoulder. “Yes, that is exactly right.”
Then we all smiled and got on with the night.
A lot of the young people in my life are struggling. Job opportunities are scarce, and the bottom has dropped out of several industries. The tech and entertainment fields have been particularly hard hit, but manufacturing, too, has stalled, and is losing ground. It is difficult for them to see where their luck might lie in this era of uncertainty.
It is a hard time to be young and talented. It wasn’t easy for me in my day. There were the requisite tears and dashed hopes and down days, but compared to now, it was a cakewalk. For these kids the whole “preparation meets opportunity” thing is ringing a bit hollow, as the latter is in very short supply.
They will fight their way through it–they will have to–and hopefully will create a new way to express and monetize their creativity. Some of the best, most productive eras in human history have followed horrific wars, terrible depressions, and devastating diseases. This is a tough time, but hopefully the struggle will produce real breakthroughs and lead to a kinder, gentler, and more sustainable way of living and making a living.
I had a young man contact me on CAMEO last week. He wrote asking for a pep-talk. “I have lost another grandparent,” was the only reason he gave.
As I talked into the camera, I ended up recounting a lot of the people I have lost in my life. I told him about how I always think of Stacy when I walk by Red Oak Drive, and of the way that Gary could make me laugh and laugh. I spoke about spending time with Michael’s grandkids and seeing so much of him in their smiles. I spoke of my own grandparents passing (I left out the fact that two were suicides, which only begins to explain my parents’ troubles.) They were gone before I could get to know them. A missed opportunity? Maybe. Maybe not.
“The thing is,” we got to have them. You got to have grandparents that you loved enough to miss and to mourn. I got to have friends and family and pets who are gone now, and it broke my heart to lose them, but they have mended me, too. Their memory sustains and guides and fills me with gratitude. We are lucky, you and I, to have loved them all.”
I hope it helped. It’s not easy to feel blessed when you are reeling from loss, when you are overwhelmed by grief or weary with frustration. But we must. This crazy, weird, mixed-up time is ours to behold and to mold. I never shared J’s disappointment with our personal origin stories. Mine has crippled me in some areas and empowered me in others. I have had my share of fortune, both good and bad, and felt privileged to receive it.
Life is long if you are lucky. I will be 67 years old this month. Ain’t that some serious damned luck?
On we go …
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