Why else?

“What we’re really talking about is a wonderful day set aside on the fourth Thursday of November when no one diets. I mean, why else would they call it Thanksgiving?”
~ Erma Bombeck

Why else, indeed?

This is the official Thankful Thursday.

We’re all thankful for health, wealth, love and friendship, roofs over our heads, food on our tables, peace in our time. (Well, maybe not today. It is the day we spend with family, after all. Somebody’s bound to have a fight.)

My official Thanksgiving gratitude list probably looks a lot like yours. I don’t have kids—and you may. You might not have a new sofa—and I do. Our different jobs are at different stages of success. Our bones are creaking more or less loudly depending on our different ages. Some of us live in colder states than others. Some of us even live under various different systems of government in different countries.

Some of us have had wonderful luck this year, and some of us have faced hardship and sadness. Some of us might even have trouble thinking of something for which to be thankful today.

So, let’s take a moment, just a moment, to remember this.

Now.

In this moment.

If you are reading this.

You are one of the luckiest people on earth.

870 million people in the world do not have enough to eat. *

780 million people lack access to fresh water.**

Almost half the world, over 3 billion people, live on less than $2.50 a day.***

More than 34 million people worldwide are living with HIV.****

There have been bombs dropping in Israel and Gaza for over a week.

Let’s not even talk about the Sudan.

Just, in general, the mere fact of having a computer, electricity, running water, something for dinner, puts us way ahead of far too many people.

Sure, we’ve all got problems and things that make us unhappy.

Let us be thankful, however, that so many of them are First World problems.

Enjoy the food, the family and the fights.

Enjoy your luck.

Happy Thanksgiving. (Someday, for everybody.)

* World Food Project

** Global Issues

*** Water

**** UNAIDS

Silver linings

And very black clouds.

There’s a hurricane out there. It may even have made landfall by the time you read this—although they say it’s moving very slowly—so maybe not.

There are going to be a lot of miracles this week connected to Sandy. There could easily be a lot of not so nice things happening as well. I’ve heard about some of them already. A playwright friend whose reading, long prepared and anticipated, had to be canceled and may have difficulty rescheduling. Another friend who gets a much needed extension on a project because a class can’t meet when subways are shutting down and mandatory evacuations are proceeding.

It’s easy, under circumstances like these, to take it personally. People have a tendency to do what I call omenizing. (Sometimes I make up my own words I’m a writer. I’m allowed.) I’ve even done a bit of omenizing myself.

This really good thing happened! Fate is on my side and everything will be perfect.

This really bad thing happened! The universe is out to get me.

Oddly enough, I thought this was going to be a post about the irony and the luck involved in moving from New York to Florida and finding that the two biggest hurricanes of recent years are hitting the City instead of the oft-troubled and occasionally inaptly named Sunshine State. And I thought I’d be segueing into a hope that there would be even bigger miracles—that the storm would turn out into the ocean, missing my fellow Americans and all the ships at sea.

But, as I write this, a little quote comes to mind that I first read in one of Robert Fulghum’s books, and I think this is the larger idea.

Sometimes it rains on the just. I believe that.
Sometimes it rains on the unjust. I believe that, too.
But I also believe that sometimes it just rains.
Neither God nor Justice or belief has anything to do with it.
—Anonymous

I think the fact that humans have the capacity to evolve to the point where we do not have to attribute these things to superstitious beliefs is, maybe, the biggest miracle.

And we can still hope that no one is hurt in the coming days.

Hope hard.

Hope never hurts.

Luck

Luck is where preparation meets opportunity.*

Or, sometimes, necessity.

My laptop crashed last week. Just refused to boot up. “Missing or corrupt system file.”

Dead. Dead. Door nail dead.

Today, I am writing this blog post on that same laptop.

I got lucky. But I planned to be lucky.

Today’s Monday Miracle is two-fold. It wasn’t a total hardware failure, and I was able to recover from the crash because I had the sense to be prepared for it when it came.

First, I had all of my installation disks for all of my software. Second, I had a record of all the product keys and serial numbers that so many of them insist you enter when you try to reinstall. Third, I had two complete and current backups of all my data. Fourth, this happened once before—a number of years ago.

I can’t even remember whether the prior crash was this laptop or the previous one. The point is I have experience. And I took notes. So, I knew what to do.

I lost some time, but nothing else.

My question to you today is are you going to plan to be lucky? Or are you going to cross your fingers and hope everything always works out okay? (There’s a guy named Murphy that will give you good odds on that one.)

It’s not just about computers.

Do you get the oil changed in your car? Do you know how to change a flat tire? Does somebody have an extra key to your living space? Have you thought about making and filing a copy of everything in your wallet? Is your resumé up to date? Do you have an emergency fund? Insurance policies?

Are you reading something every day about the industry that you’re in or that you want to join? Have you stretched yourself lately? Learned a new skill? Added some new people to your network? Re-connected with some old acquaintances?

If something unforeseen happened—good or bad—are you equipped to leverage the good and minimize the bad?

Luck doesn’t just happen. Unless you’ve got a winning lottery ticket—and even then, you had to buy it.

* Seneca

Elaine Smith Writes

Anything She Wants

Tag Archives: Luck

Why else?

Silver linings

Luck