Who would
have thought thinking about buses can bring someone to interesting
philosophical reasoning. I would have. This happened to me once already. I was
waiting with my friend for a bus number 6 to arrive to take us home. A bus with
the number 20 blinking on its led screen approached. As it stopped the number
20 suddenly changed to 6. Just like that. I was thrown aback. How even a small
change, like a number, can have a great impact on one’s perceiving of destiny.
Before the bus changed from 20 to 6 I knew instantly with just looking at it,
where it came from and I knew where it was going. But with that change, a bus,
that was “predestined” to go one way, suddenly became a totally new, different
bus, with new sets of bus stops and the past that does not correspond with the
one presumed for the number displayed.
I wondered then
how this can be applied to human experience. We all know how everyday common
incidents can affect the course of our lives. And similarly to the bus
situation, when I knew the path before and after it changed from one number to
the other - although they couldn’t be more different - I always know I am on
the “right” path, the one path that I am living right now, all the time. Never
mind the constant changes of hearts that I have. Which I do. A lot. It is
because the reality we perceive is not the reality of chances and options but
of things that occur, that through outcome of random events manifest from a
cloud of possibilities.
And this is
what I wanted to talk about in this entry. Being happy or lucky. Wait what? It
will all make sense in the end. Just stick with me.
Last
Tuesday I went to Ljubljana. I had to get off the bus somewhere on the
periphery of the city and then catch a bus to the centre. Ljubljana has
upgraded public transport system from analogue (coins) to digital (cards) so
using the card is the only option to get on the bus. I had none. Sadly enough,
there was no machine to buy them either, since I was in periphery. Figures. So
I decided to take a walk. No problem there, I like walking, even in that
freezing cold. I only thought of my friend waiting for me outside (her choice
as she is a smoker) for a while longer.
I was at
the intersection of two bus routes, 1 and 6. From there on they both go the
same way, leading me to my freezing friend. I knew there is only one machine on
the way, but it is so close to where she was waiting, that, once reaching it,
it would make little sense to buy it (remember that the point was to get on the
bus to reach my friend sooner, not actually possessing the card, which would be
wise to do in order to avoid future similar situations). I could at that moment
take the turn right to go backwards on the route of bus 1 in order to get to a
machine and try hopping on a bus. So going straight ahead irrefutably meant
walking, which would have me and her freezing outside, turning right, however,
would have meant taking a risk and get to a machine, buy the card get on the
bus and reach her sooner. Or would it?
I made a
quick decision to go straight forward. No taking the right turn. There were way
too many conditions involved. If I get the machine, if it is close, if it
works, if the bus comes soon. I calculated there is little chance for all of
these conditions to align just right. But! What if I get to the machine that is
in fact close AND working AND the bus is approximately right distance away for
me to have time to execute this? What if this is factual reality that I do not
know of. I imagined a phone call to my friend explaining the situation. I heard
her say: luck is on the side of the brave. And I started reasoning.
Would
turning right really make me brave? Would it make me lucky, if things were to
happen the best way imaginable? What it would have made me, if I had taken the
risk and only gained to fail - no machine, no bus and reaching my friend in the
frozen cryosleep state? Misfortunate? That seems to be the definition.
Let’s take
a look at the mechanics of being lucky, now. There is you making a decision to
take a jump into a situation of unknown outcome. And there is a line of action
that is either already in course or is about to be, but it is utterly and
completely out of your control. This is the normal setup for the luck scenario.
When you make a decision you plan your next action. Either you wait for the
line of action to actually conjoin with yours, like in lottery, or you are
going towards it. However, you are not allowed to influence it. Then you make a
bet, with yourself. You challenge something, which you have no control over, with
saying, if you happen my desired way, then
I will be rewarded. You give something like a chance to have a part in
defining who you are, how you are. Lucky or not? It seems like one sided
dialogue with the catatonic person, or like saying Sit! to a cat. We ask for permission to participate and are feeling
rewarded by positive outcome of something that doesn’t even care about our
existence and then we take it as a judgement about ourselves. Can it be that we are so arrogant to own even
something like chance?
How can
your decision, in any possible way imaginable, have influence on already
unwinding line of action (including people and their decisions) before it
conjoined with it? Matter of fact, how can any decision have any influence on
anything, before any action is taken? It can’t. Action is needed. So decision
to act is nothing. But action, although necessary, still seems futile. The
judgement whether you are lucky or not depends completely on the outcome, which
can be influenced only in a long term goal, like invading Russia. Right, Mr.
Hitler?
When your
goal demands your active participation, then by your action you change the
chances, either making them more or less in your favour. This is what the
saying “luck is on the side of the brave” means, because with taking action we
are heightening the chances of a goal to actually happen, leaving the sense of
being lucky way at bay of indifference. But this is not what I am talking
about. I am more interested in the mechanics and the sense of accomplishment
when the outcome of it is positive.
How do we
perceive luck? We consider lucky someone, to whom extraordinary things happen,
especially when there is not much chance for it. Luck is a positive outcome of
a low possibility scenario. When everything works out just perfectly. Like it
was meant to be. Returning to my situation, it would have surely made me lucky
in the eyes of others, if everything had worked out for me as wished. Luck’s
core is based in chances, as we saw. It pours down from the cloud of
possibilities. The lower they trade, the greater the luck, when they happen.
The thing
with chances is, you need to make them high. The more you try the better the
chances. Like pulling a marble out of a bowl of black marbles and trying to get
the only white one inside - this one representing a positive, wished outcome.
With each unsuccessful draw you are closer to the white one. Although pulling
the white ball with the first draw would surely make you luckier than someone
who pulled it after few more draws. So it is safe to say that luck is more on
the side of persistent than brave. Bravery is needed in every case. More so in
repeating after failed scenario. However, when does that bravery turn into stubbornness?
When does continuing to keep on drawing balls make you simply stupid? And then
it hit me. There are different levels of being lucky. It does not help that the
thing you want works out the way you desired. It needs to happen on the first
draw, too. We are putting too much significance to something that is oblivious
of our existence. Why do we involve emotion? Will getting stuff happening to us
make us happier?
Sure, money
can buy security, fame feeds insecurity, owning fills in the gap until
something new comes along making a gap wider in the process, loving someone
fights purposelessness, following a dream resolves issues with self-esteem and
I could go on and on, finding the same old reason for human desire. Not feeling
good enough as it is. On our own.
Only
positive outcomes of things make you a lucky person, that is what we believe,
but they cannot make you happy, can they? They can make you “feel” happy, but
that is fleeting. It does not stick. What sticks IS already. The happiness
inside. If being lucky made you a happy person, then a person who only wishes
for things that are possible, that have high chances of happening, would
harbour great happiness inside. Which would basically mean that playing it safe
and not taking any risks, not following anything that demands more labour -
living almost passively – would make you the happiest person on earth. But that
surely is not the way. We humans, we need to excel, we need to endeavour, we
need to participate at least in our own life. We want to be challenged and
evoke the sense of purpose when our work has paid off. No, choosing only things
that are plausible to happen would be an option for the curve cutters and would
most definitely left you with the sense of surviving more than living.
The true
happiness lays somewhere else. In the wishes. If wishes represent the cloud of
possibilities, and the higher the number of those which have occurred is, the
luckier you are perceived and more happiness you feel, then the way to true happiness
is by letting the wishes go. Not – not having them. Knowing they are there but
letting them go in order to avoid emotional response to whatever outcome. You still
work on it. You still need bravery. You are simply armoured with the knowledge
that things have the tendency to run their course and have nothing to say about
you, your state in the universe or the personal vengeance from the almighty. By
doing that everything becomes merely an outcome of an event that you have no
control over. If they are negative, than be it so, if they are positive than be
it so, too. I need to point out again that losing wishes does not mean losing
desire. Desire is crucial to human experience of life. You just do not take the
outcomes as a factor in measuring your own happiness. Happiness is a state of
mind.
And there is that.
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