All of us struggle with ‘luck‘ and its ‘meaning‘ in our lives, particularly when life doesn’t go our way. This article ‘Luck is not Meaningful Enough‘ is based on a thought I tweeted.
Humans are ‘Meaning’ Machines
Let’s say you trip over something during your daily walk and break your leg. Hypothetically, of course. (I wish you good health and a long life!)
You’ve passed that spot every day for years and so have thousands of others without breaking anything. As you lay in the bed recovering, you wrestle with the following questions:
- Why did this happen to me?
- Why did it never happen to anyone else?
- Was there something I did wrong?
- Is God punishing me for something?”
Sounds familiar.
You are not alone.
Patrick Sumner, a surgeon and the protagonist of Ian McGuire‘s dark whaling yarn, The North Water, finds himself questioned in a situation where he is the lone survivor of the whaling expedition:
‘If you can’t save him, then why are you here?’ she asks. ‘What are you for?’
‘Everyone died except for you. Why did you live?’
We ask ‘Why?’
We want to know the meaning of everything that happens to us. We interpret the meaning of every moment, and our brain holds on to the meaning to help explain past and future events.
Haruki Murakami noted in 1Q84: “I can bear any pain as long as it has meaning.”
Humans desire meaning; we are ‘meaning’ machines. Without meaning, we struggle to make sense of our lives and the world.
Luck and Meaning
Luck refers to events that influence our lives but are not of our making.
Luck represents random events and disorder. We struggle to assign meaning to chance events that we call ‘luck’.
There’s an asymmetry in our brain when it comes to luck.
Good Luck is Attributed to Our Skills
Let’s say you start trading in the stock market, without any prior experience, and make 100,000 dollars in a month.
Do you attribute it to luck? Or would you, like most sensible human beings, assign it to your newly acquired expertise in day trading.
Bad Luck is Someone Else’s Responsibility
We struggle to find meaning when we break a leg.
We usually choose to blame someone else – our past self (for its sins), God’s punishment, evil intentions of others, and so on.
Philosophy and Meaning of Life
The deep human need for meaning arises from our desire to feel significant in a universe whose origins, purpose and vastness defy human comprehension.
Nietzsche believed in ‘eternal recurrence‘, that life repeats itself infinitely. Thus giving life ‘weight’, or meaning to our actions and decisions.
Our daily experience suggests ‘each of us has one very short life to live and that life occurs only once and never again – thus “The Unbearable Lightness of Being” that Milan Kundera wrote about in his book. Lightness here is the absence of meaning.
There are no definite, objective answers to meaning in philosophy. If there are, please point me towards them.
Luck is not ‘Meaningful’ Enough
Events ‘are’ what they are – sometimes they work in our favour and sometimes against us.
When faced with random and disordered events called ‘luck’, there are no answers.
There is no ‘Why?’.
Patrick Sumner’s response in The North Water when questioned about being the lone survivor:
‘If you can’t save him, then why are you here?’ she asks. ‘What are you for?’
‘I’m here by accident. It doesn’t mean anything.’
‘Everyone died except for you. Why did you live?’
‘There is no why,’ he says.
Sometimes we need to know what things don’t mean – that sometimes there is no meaning.
Is there truly no meaning at all?
Viktor Frankl believes we all need to define our subjective meaning in life. He says:
Ultimately, man should not ask what the meaning of his life is, but rather he must recognize that it is he who is asked.
Each man is questioned by life; and he can only answer to life by answering for his own life; to life he can only respond by being responsible.
You need to choose and define the meaning for yourself. No one else can do that for you.
How to Deal with Luck and Meaning
I believe there are more practical ways to look at this.
Acknowledge the Role of Luck in Life
Ignoring the role of luck is a recipe for bad luck, says Max Gunther in How to be Lucky.
Be brutally honest and classify if the good or bad events in your life are due to skill or luck.
Don’t blame yourself for bad luck. But don’t believe that you ‘deserve’ good luck. You may deserve it, but whether you get it is a matter of – well, luck.
Accept Things Outside Your Control
All is luck when skill is played out.
Our focus should be on things in our control as Stoic philosophy advises. Things have meaning when you focus on things in your control.
For things outside your control, develop a radical acceptance and learn from water.
Prepare for Bad Luck
Existential questions usually arise when we face adverse conditions – bad luck.
Prepare for bad luck.
Three suggestions on How?
1. Identify the second-order effects of your actions or events.
These are answers to questions like:
‘If I break my leg, do I have enough money for treatment.’
‘If I lose my job or my business comes to a standstill suddenly, do I have enough money for living expenses?’
2. Prepare a plan to deal with adverse second-order effects
Set up an emergency fund to deal with the job loss, business issue or ill-health.
Write down the second-order effects and your plan. Writing gives concrete shape to ephemeral, disordered thoughts and helps reduce anxiety.
A written plan will make you confident.
Be Open for Opportunities and Good Luck
When you are confident of dealing with bad luck, your attitude becomes positive and you are ready for good luck.
The below tips may also help with luck:
- Think for yourself and take responsibility for yourself.
- Go where events flow fast. Where things are ‘happening‘, new opportunities arise.
- Look at opportunities others are ignoring. Sometimes there is a good reason why others are ignoring opportunities, but sometimes people are just unaware. Take calculated risks.
A closing thought from Iain M. Banks that may (or may not) comfort you.
Meaning is everywhere. There is always meaning.
Or at least all things show a disturbing tendency to have meaning ascribed to them when intelligent creatures are present.
It’s just that there’s no final Meaning, with a capital M. Though the illusion that there might be is comforting for a certain class of mind.
Recommended Reading
Thoughts in the article were influenced by the following books.
1. Player of Games by Iain M. Banks (Article)
2. Hydrogen Sonata by Iain M. Banks (Article)
3. Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl (Book Summary)
4. How to be Lucky by Max Gunther (Book Summary – coming soon)
5. 1Q84 by Haruki Murakami (Article)
6. The North Water by Ian McGuire (Book Review).
Thanks for your time reading the article. I hope you found it useful. Please use the comments section below to share your views on the topic of luck.
Read More Like This
Read More Like This
Wow, I liked this quote, ” I can bear any pain, as long as it has meaning.” Awesome post