Luck! We all want it, but no one knows how to get it. Even those who have it don’t know how they got it. And those who had it once don’t know how to find it again. Oh, to be lucky!
One of my favorite novels in the whole world, which I was lucky enough to discover recently, is about luck and how to find it. Here’s a quote from the classic masterpiece Lucky Jim by Kingsley Amis:
“For once in his life Dixon resolved to bet on his luck. What luck had come his way in the past he’d distrusted, stingily held on to until the chance of losing his initial gain was safely past. It was time to stop doing that.”
Notice that luck isn’t something that Jim Dixon, aka Lucky Jim, simply has or doesn’t have. There’s an element of initiative and action here. Luck is something that must be bet on. Luck is something that can be held on to stingily.
You have to make the right decisions to get or keep luck. But hold on to luck too tightly and it will leave you. I believe these things are true.
We get the same impression about luck from another quote, from later in the novel:
“It was luck you needed all along; with just a little more luck he’d have been able to switch his life on to a momentarily adjoining track, a track destined to swing aside at once away from his own.”
Jim needs luck. But he needs more than just luck. With the addition of luck into his life, he can take action to switch his life to a new track.
And so the novel plays out, with Jim testing his luck, taking risks and hoping to beat the odds. It’s a fabulous novel, very smart and also extremely funny.
How do you find your luck, then? You must step out and actively put yourself in situations where luck might find you. And that’s the wisdom for today.
Are you actively looking for luck?
Sounds like a great read! Just ordered it through interlibrary loan.
Enjoy! It’s such a good book š