Luck | noun | Success or failure apparently brought by chance rather than through one's own actions.
If I were to adjust this definition to my dad’s version, it would be this:
Success or failure happens only as a result of luck, and some of us have it, and a lot of us don’t.
What a bleak realization for a seven year old who just asked how actors get to become actors. “They’re lucky,” my dad said, flat and unfeeling. I’ve tried scraping that belief off the sides of my brain for years now, along with its accompanying anecdotes like my dad telling me that there’s no money in art or that film school was too expensive and there aren’t that many jobs anyway (wrong, btw).
The belief I learned was that I wasn’t worthy of being lucky, so I was not worthy of having the life I wanted.
Luck and Worth
In my self-reflective years (the past 10 or so years) I have gone back to these anecdotes and this belief a lot: that some of us just get lucky but that I, and my whole family, are not lucky. That was the collective agreement.
What I find laughable is that my dad had a gambling addiction. An addiction to luck. Though he thought he could beat odds, and beat luck, by staying up all of Friday night handicapping the horse races. It was like he was trying to prove his own beliefs wrong. And he loved to bet a longshot.
Everything I’ve wanted in life has come up against my deeply ingrained, shitty belief in luck only being afforded to some. A nice house, a meaningful career, enough money to survive and thrive, more followers on Substack. They all have to pass through the swamp of “but am I fortunate enough to have this?”
This, my friends, is a deeply painful way to live. Hanging on to the hopes that someone (God, the Universe, or whatever) will pick me and afford me the luck and opportunity to have what I want in life is crazy-making.
And, what adds to the crazy-making, is that I have a very blessed and privileged life full of what you might call “luck.” I actually have gotten a lot of what I wanted in life. I have a lot of evidence that tells me I didn’t necessarily need luck, or that I just do have a lot of luck.
But it hasn’t been enough evidence to change my rooted beliefs. I still brush up with the battle of feeling worthy of the things I want in life.
My biggest one continues to be a meaningful career. Just tonight, before surrendering to sitting down to write this post, I thought, “Maybe I will just focus on getting my resume together, and get a 9-5, because maybe I don’t really want this.” This, is not very defined. This, has been an ever-revolving door of art, writing, YouTube videos, all of it. I want to work for myself but have no idea, still, what that means or looks like or how the fuck I’ll ever make money doing it. It gets to the point of being demoralizing. I feel like giving up all the time.
There is certainly more than the idea of luck behind why I get discouraged in my drive to work for myself and do creative work for a living, but the idea that I am not deserving for one reason or another is a pretty big one.
I have identified a lot of what I’m sharing here in therapy. I’ve discussed my dad’s views and their impact on me in more than three sessions, and am currently sitting in front of an art print that says “Don’t wait for luck.”
So How Do I Change This Belief For Good?
I’m not sure that I do.
I think I will always brush up with it. I think it will take ongoing awareness of when my luck comes into question, when my inherent worth is challenged by my protective part that wants to save me from the pain and grief I experienced in childhood.
But I think I can shift my response to this belief. That I can hold some other ones simultaneously.
A Better Way to Look at Luck
There isn’t any such thing as luck. Or if there is, we all have it.
This isn’t accounting for the effects things like race, gender, sexuality, and class all have on our 3D world experiences of life. If you want to look at “luck” of a white man vs a black man, it will likely look very different, for example. I feel it would be irresponsible of me not to mention this.
But, on a larger, more “spiritual” scale, I do believe that we all deserve the same thing: the life we want. A good, fulfilling life. And we are all inherently deserving of that. So luck doesn’t really get to enter into that belief. Bad things happen to everyone at some point, and for some people, life has been hard. But it doesn’t have to stay that way, and I don’t think those people were doomed by a lack of luck (again, see above). We can all align with the future we want, with the life we so richly deserve.
I may always run my desires through the filter of “am I lucky enough to have this?” But I can follow it with: “We are all inherently worthy. Luck doesn’t get to enter into it.”
We are all inherently worthy. Luck doesn’t get to enter into it.
What my dad might say now
When I visited my dad’s grave on my recent trip to California, I noticed something very interesting. Through my tears, I looked at his neighbor to the left and saw this:
I couldn’t believe it. A man named “Lucky.”
Now we could take this as my dad’s affirmation that it is those around us that are lucky, and not us, but I choose to believe that my dad is now his true self, free of all his baggage. And I think that version of my dad is telling me “You are inherently lucky.”
So that’s what I’m taking away now. I don’t wait for luck. I don’t wish for luck. I don’t need luck. None of us do. We just have to find it in ourselves to believe the truth. That we all are inherently worthy of everything we wish to have in life.