I spit for thee

I know someone who is always speaking of how bad her luck is. Her luck is terrible with dating, she says, while turning down people who have expressed interest in her and manufacturing reasons that it is bad timing, the wrong person, or not a planned date up to her standards. Terrible luck at work, when others lose their jobs, and she keeps hers. Awful misfortune in life because her car needs normal repairs, that, yes, cost money, or because normal mishaps happen at stores, in her kitchen, when making plans with friends.


Another person in my life has done something both illegal and very, very risky multiple times, and as a result, has been in more than a few life-rattling moments, and been arrested about that number of times. He walks away physically whole each time, having not hurt himself, or anyone else. But talks always of how unlucky it was that he got caught. How a series of events lead the police to get involved, not his actions or mis-steps. Meanwhile, I privately think he has been exceptionally fortunate to be alive without harming anyone else, and know that that luck won't likely last.

So, pardon me if I say luck is sometimes a bad joke to me. It's hard to know, for sure, what I think about it. I'm unlucky that my last Toyota caught fire on the Garden State Parkway, but I'm lucky that it did so feet from the exit, and literally, 4 days before the planned purchase of my next car. I'm lucky that my new Toyota has a an even newer engine, but unlucky that that happened because Jiffy Lube ruined the engine that came with the car (don't get oil changes at Jiffy Lube!!). I'm unlucky in that I probably can't have children, but lucky in that I always had interest in adopting. I have terrible Scrabble karma - I mean really, I always have like 6 i's and a j - but, ummm, who cares. It's a game. (Maybe one I cheated on in a past life, causing someone else to lose their fortune?)

So, luck is a concept I don't always know how to handle. I will tell someone, "Good Luck!" because it's what we say, it's what we do. And it sounds better than, "Go forth and do as you will and see what you get in return." (Which, really, would make me sound like an ass.) But in actuality, It's hard to know what role luck actually plays in things. Often, as in the examples, above, luck seems to have nothing to do with anything. People ascribe bad luck to consequences they may have tacitly chosen but aren't willing to accept, or overlook that there are far more chances than they are willing or able to work with.

The other thing I think about luck is part and parcel with some of the examples from my life, cars, child bearing, Scrabble . . . those things may be part of a wider pattern, one we only get a glimpses of. What looks like bad luck today could end up being part of something far more positive tomorrow, or 4 years from now. Or, maybe, never. It's not so much that I believe in fate, or pre-ordination, because I think we are choosing, carving our path, deciding things all the time, every moment. Just that . . . things can work together for greater purposes, good or bad, I suppose. And we can't always see that in the moment that we are holding the parking ticket and cursing the Gods for the thing that made us late, for the meter-maid who got there RIGHT as our last minute ran out, for the 2 hour limit to begin with (why can't I just PARK there for 4 hours?).

Of course I think about this a lot as an unemployed person. Is it lucky or unlucky that I lost my job? Both probably, in the eyes of me, and also good and bad, for different people supporting me and trying to love me through this. Do I sometimes want to claim bad luck for not having gotten a couple of the jobs I interviewed for an wanted? Or, maybe even more so, for the bad interviews I went on . . . most notably the one that had me invest so much time only to change the details out from under me at the 11th hour (almost literally). Yep. For sure I sometimes begin to think, "What bad luck I have!." But then, when I land a job (yes, WHEN) I don't want someone to take the reverse and say, "You got lucky." All of the hard work I've done preparing myself, writing cover letters, applying, interviewing, networking, and fighting with my self-esteem would feel minimized by counting it as "luck" instead of accomplishment

At this point, I pretty frequently hear the phrase "numbers game" in that it is supposedly the case that getting a job is somewhat dependent on "a numbers game." I'm sure this is true. I have applied to over 100 jobs, and of course, I need to keep growing this statistic until I find the right one. But here's what this doesn't mean to me - that if you spew resumes out into the void at a high enough rate a job will boomerang back unto you. Because being ready, qualified, presenting well, and demonstrating a fit of skills and personal qualities has to matter too . . . doesn't it? It can't all just be chance and accumulation of attempts. Well, let me say this - for me it can't because it matters to me that I did more than stay on the treadmill.

On the other hand, having said all of these rational, perhaps overly logical, Spock-like things about luck, I'll admit the other side to you. I recently told the person I'm in a relationship with that we couldn't go out anywhere nice - nowhere that I need to dress for (this is a real measure in Boulder, where jeans and flip flops appear in abundance, everywhere). When asked why I said, "Well, you had mentioned doing this when that job was supposedly checking my references (which they did not. They instead asked for my references to keep me on the hook while they decided they couldn't afford to hire anyone full-time, in case they ended up wanting to hire me. Arg). And then I said we shouldn't celebrate until there was something to celebrate. No jumping up and down. So, now I don't want to jinx any other options." And so when we go out, we eat burgers and burritos, which are super tasty, but which I'm sure he'd rather take a break from.

I also have been doing a lot of spitting. this is because I am a massive West Wing fan (ahem, nerd). And on election night there is a whole thing where one of the characters is shocked to find his boss has written a concession speech for an election he is sure the incumbent President is about to win.

Sam Seaborn: You wrote a concession? 
Toby Ziegler: Of course I wrote a concession. You want to tempt the wrath of the whatever from high atop the thing? 
Sam Seaborn: No. 
Toby Ziegler: Then go outside, turn around three times and spit. What the hell's the matter with you? 

I can't afford to tempt the wrath from the whatever from high atop the thing. So, I spit. And when another friend was jumping through the hoops academia asks some of the most highly trained and educated people on the planet to jump through to get jobs, I spit for him too. (Literally. Yes, I know it's gross, but that whole week of job talks and committee meetings and dinners I went out on my porch each evening and spit.) Apparently I have earned that favor being returned because I informed him today that I am on a strict program of merely noting pros and cons of jobs I'm applying or interviewing for, but that nonetheless, I thought it was worth mentioning an interview for an intriguing non-profit. He replied simply with, "I spit for thee."

Smile.

I'm not that superstitious. Though, I spit, and am pleased to be spit (spat?) for. I do not want to get dressed up and go out to dinner prematurely, because . . . well, partially because that dinner will taste better when I know I earned it. And partially because I'm afraid of the wrath, of the you know, up atop, wherever. I know athletes that need to wear certain things for luck, or surgeons. My brother, when he wrestled, had a hand-me-down Grateful Dead tie-dyed tee shirt that my uncle rescued from the liberal arts college he worked at. And wearing that t-shirt became a necessity at every wrestling meet. (It wasn't even his shirt originally!) This is all fine. Some of this, I think, is security and habit. And for all that I am attached to my routines, I don't have a lot of these. At least not that I can think of off the top of my head. "Depend on the rabbit's foot if you will, but remember, it didn't work out for the rabbit." R.E. shay comes to mind. And this is also a reminder that what seems like good luck to my neighbor, might be very bad luck for me . . . or the rabbit.

I do think that what we call luck is often a strange combination of factors, and that we attract opportunity to ourselves, but not always easily. And, it's worth noting, we can attract bad opportunity to ourselves, as when those who have been victims of muggings become victims a second or third time. (It's important to note, I am not saying this is the victim/survivors fault. As a survivor of a violent crime, myself, I know the pain of blaming ones' self. What I am saying is that I took it as my responsibility to make sure I would not appear vulnerable in that way again . . . and it has worked out. So far.) I can't say for sure what counts as luck and fortune, but think, "Being deeply learned and skilled, being well trained and using well spoken words; this is good luck." Buddha. That's the kind of luck I'd like to attribute success to . . . once I find it.

Like my person said recently, "Luck, to me, is simply the vision to recognize the opportunities around us, and the ability to take advantage of them . . . Being able to see what good we can make of what we have in front of us. Not everyone gets all opportunities in front of them but . . . I think there are a lot more opportunities around than most people are able to grab hold of." The ability to see what good we can make of what's before us has been present for me for several months now. My blog-assigning friend quickly jumped on my job-loss as good fortune, intended to be a way out for me. And it brings me back to my dear friend who happens to be in jail and still able to say he is choosing to be happy, choosing to take this time to plumb the foundations of his faith.

But I will also note that my person said all he said about what luck is to him, and then he said, "I'm not 100% sure." No, none of us are.

Mostly, I don't want to fall into treating my good days and bad days as being random, or worse, somehow a punishment visited on me, as with the people in my life who fall back on "bad luck" to explain everything they aren't happy with or aren't prepared to take responsibility for. I'd rather believe, simply, "I'm a great believer in luck, and I find the harder I work the more I have of it. " Thomas Jefferson (man, do I love him as a writer, founding father, and perplexingly contradictory figure)

I am working hard, on all fronts. I will make a slight nod towards the wrath from high atop the thing (much like Bell-ringings at Hampshire College. When I first arrived I used to intentionally walk under the bell to see the heart-stopping looks that DivIII students would give me, thinking, "Umm, yeah. It's a BELL." After seeing a few of these celebrations though, the myth had power, if not for belief in it controlling graduation, for the people I had seen earn their way to it and the respect I had for them. Honestly? By the end of my third year I was carving a wide path around the bell and by my 4th year, trying not to even walk on that side of the building.) but mostly, I'll just keep trying to bust my ass to get what I want. And spit.