The Luck and the Extraordinary

THE LUCK AND THE EXTRAORDINARY

VICTOR MANUEL GUZMAN VILLENA

If one day we ate apples and they feed us, on the following day it would kill us; if our neighbor was an agreeable man and at the same time a maniac killer; the human life and the society would not resist it; in fact it might not have developed. But the regularity and the normality of the established order it is not all in the human kingdom.

The luck and the coincidence pops in often and mix up the mentioned regularity, provoking "without knowing how or why" events that affect in considerable form our well-being and our adversity. And it is just here where the luck enters in scene. Both the luck and the fortune are evidently vain. As says Horacio: "The happy fortune, is cruel action, and been obstinate on having played its perverse game, always changing its inconstant honors, favoring me now or some one else."

 

The luck is the antithesis of a reasonable expectation. It is evident in contra-indicated situations, events that are surprising because they are opposed to all kinds of predictable situations. Some of the fundamental examples of events that we should surprise are those that are out of our control and those which contingency is inherently eventful.

The luck grows between the probability and the reality, between what it is possible to wait reasonably (what for logic should happen) and what really happens. When both coincide, the luck disappears, the individual who obtains a foreseeable profit is fortunate, but it is not lucky. But when the good thing or the bad thing enters action in circumstances in which the reality disagrees with a reasonable expectation, of that time, the luck, already be good or bad, it is in scene.

Nevertheless, a happy or unhappy event can be a luck matter from the point of view of the recipient, even if it is a result of a strategy debated by others. (A beneficent secret that sends to us a check with an important quantity represents a blow of good luck, although it is something that he has planned for years). in such a way if someone different to the affected person is capable of predicting an unexpected event, it enters in the field of the luck for those that are implied.

THE GOOD THINGS

There are, in general, three ways to reach the good things in life as health, wealth and the success, and similar others: theoretically they can be achieved by means of the effort and the hard work (to the old style), or thanks to the fortune (for birth and heredity), or simply being lucky winning the "lottery of the life". Usually, for most of us and during most of the time, the good things are a fruit of the effort, the planning, the work and the determination.

The luck represents a way of obtaining them more easily, as if it was a question of a "gift of the gods". (And, of course, it works in two senses: what the good luck gives, the bad luck takes it). The luck comes to be a short cut that allows us to reach the good things of the life.

With good luck we obtain something for nothing, an unexpected and undeserved birth. Normally the good things that happen to us are a fruit of our skill, an our effort, while everything bad that happens to us is imputed, consequently, to our defects. But the luck provides an alternative route to us. For those that have the favors of the luck, "a blow of good luck is so good as a knowledge sack" ( says the saying). When someone admits that has good luck, the natural reaction not only is of surprise, but also of pleasing. To have a favor that to take to us as a game of circumstances when we have not asked for, is something that someone has the obligation to find agreeably.

THE EXPECTED

Since the luck implies that the things happen for good or for bad of unforeseeable form, it is deduced that it is necessary to think that the people are lucky whenever someone reaches the success beyond the reasonable level of sense of expectancy that their inherited qualities and acquired conditions would indicate. And on the contrary, those that fail beyond the reasonable level of sense of expectancy that their defects indicate, shortcomings and personal deficits, would be necessary to think that simply they have no luck. Therefore, whenever the things pass for normal and natural couses as someone hopes that should pass, the luck is not in scene.

The luck implies an alienation of the expected, and its place in the stage of the human matters insures itself for the fact that the conditions of the life are irregular, be of social, political or astrological character; the things do not always pass for normal and regular channels. Every one can have a bad day, even big champions like Tiger Woods or Michael Schumacher.

IT IS ALWAYS A GIFT

Does not matter what the good luck give to us, it is always a gift; whenever the luck is implied, it is not required to put ourselves to test our talent not even to realize any effort, and no merit it is in game. On the contrary, whatever the bad luck takes from us, it leaves our intact merits; our worth does not suffer any decrease when the luck is in game, demands neither a decrease of our talents nor a defeat of our effort.

The luck fond of our personal condition, but it does not reflect our personal worth. Alfaro, Allende, Guevara, Lincoln were murdered. Harry Truman, Ronald Reagan the Pope Juan Pablo II survived the attempts of murders. (In case of Truman he went out completely unharmed and it is possible to be said that he was lucky). In this context, no particular merit is added aside either of the dichotomy, or any special defect to other. When we say that it is as well as the luck works, we have said everything.

The coincidence is evident of more notable form when the improbable circumstances happen in fact. We are lucky especially when the things are favorable to us in spite of our inaction, or even more, in spite of the bad advices and the wrong actions. And hence, we have especially bad luck when the things gobad for us in spite of having done everything precise so that they were going out well.

The patient who recovers suddenly in spite of having taken the medicines that were not the right ones, is lucky; the one that deteriorates in spite of being take the precise medication and continue the suitable treatment, has no luck. In such cases, the logic of the common sense of the concrete situation indicates in a direction, while the dictations of the destination indicate in the opposite direction. The functioning of the luck is evident clearly in the favorable and adverse events that do not have to happen "for logic".

Between thousand shares in the stock-exchange some are destined to rise while others not, independently to that the moment is propitious or not. Numerous people have shares. Therefore, always will be losers and winners. And, given the eventful of the matter, the difference between them will generally depend only and exclusively of luck.