Michael Jordan once said, “Some people want
it to happen, some wish it would happen, others make it happen.” Now before you
let your imagination get the better of you, let me just tell you that he was
talking about luck. For some, luck is what happens when preparations meet
opportunities. For others, the harder they work towards something, the more
luck they seem to have. For me however, the only thing I know for certain about
luck is that it will change. And my trysts with it over the years are nothing
but proof of the same…
As a child, I was always considered the
lucky one amongst my siblings and that wasn’t only because I was the youngest
of us three. Most often than not, I was the one to find things lying around –
it started off small with a cool pencil on the bus or a chocolate near the
shops and then moved on to bigger things like an Archie’s comic book at school
and money on the ground while on the walk home. My sister and brother would
always give me the once over with a quizzical glint in their eyes, questioning
if I’d orchestrated the whole luck thing somehow. At times even I wondered why
lady luck seemed to be on my side so much till a wise person told me, “Don’t
question it. Just enjoy it while it lasts.” And I’m glad I paid heed to those
words because shortly thereafter, the tides turned…
We took off on a family vacation to
Singapore and I must have been all of six or seven years at the time. The trip
began with the usual amount of excitement and chaos and I expected my good luck
to follow suit. To be fair, it did. We got to the unique city and I seemed to
be striking gold from the moment we touched down! For instance, for every meal
that we had, all of us were given individual lucky scratch cards. Whilst my
sister and brother kept striking out with words like ‘Try again!’ and ‘Better
luck next time’, I kept getting free meals, free drinks, free this and free
that so much so that my siblings then took to just handing me their cards to
unveil for them. When we went to gaming arcades, I was the won winning all the
tickets and walking away with my arms laden with stuffed toys. But then, all of
a sudden my luck decided to go on a vacation of its own and I started to come
up short – from losing all our fully-paid-for tube passes and leaving a bag of
lychees (which, in those days, were a hard-to-come-by treat) on the tube to
somehow bringing down the paneling of the ceiling in our hotel room. So it was
no surprise that, as the holiday drew to an end, I heaved a sigh of relief,
believing that my luck was waiting for me at home.
Now that I think of it, I can’t really
remember if it was. But I do know that since then, it visits me ever so often,
sometimes even multiple times in a day. For I consider myself lucky when I get
a parking spot in the middle of a crowded street on a busy day; I’m fortunate
when I run into someone I haven’t seen in a while but treasure; I’m blessed to
have a family that will call me out when I’m wrong but stand by me 100%, come
what may; I’m propitious enough to have found work that I love but keeps me on
my toes every single day. And on those off days when I seem to run into a bit
of bad luck, I’m just reminded of all the luck I’ve already had and I cherish
all of it all the more. Call it luck, blessings or even a guardian angel, it
still comes down to the same thing – a blessed, lucky and happy me!
