Six Shots or Five?

I wonder if others out there feel like things come together in waves of good and bad luck. Luck is something that I hear people talk about as though one can own it, have it or not have it. People talk about luck as though it is the very cause of our good fortune… good things are happening because we are lucky. It’s perverse, in a way, that we do this, because luck isn’t cause… it does not exist in any kind of chain of events as one dominoes in a line amongst others, generating fortuitous consequences.  Luck is not a force amongst other forces that we can posses and wield like superheroes. Luck is just the word we use to describe events when they have gone our way, especially when the outcome was against the odds. Luck didn’t bring the event about, it is just the way we interpreted it after it happened.

So when yesterday I faced a dull ache in my mouth from an infection, pain in my eyes and temples from an out of date sight prescription, an email from Paypal declaring that they would be holding funds in my account for 21 days before could withdraw them, an aggressive email from an Ebayer who is trying to fleece me, and discovered that the car MOT had actually run out at the start of the month… it was very, very tempting to feel like some external force was at play, raining on my parade.

Luck is something that we humans have certainly invested a lot of energy in; many cultures and religions have some sort of numerology at play, lucky and unlucky numbers, and preferential numbers. I, like may others, have worn pendants and rings in the past with the purpose of bringing me luck, owned a lucky pair of socks, exercise good luck rituals connected with the sequence I do things in. I guess in there is the superstitious creature that inhabits us all. A human search for cause and effect that sometimes leads us down cul de sacs of understanding. Somewhere in there, when the hourglass of luck was inverted in our understanding to be cause rather than effect, luck became interchangeable with hope and a means for controlling fear and managing stress. A soothing tool (we all need those). And soothing tools are no bad thing… usually.

But does ‘believing in luck’ necessitate believing too in bad luck? Just as luck gives us hope, when the grey clouds gather overhead are we robbed of hope? If that is the case then when things don’t go our way, against the odds, I for one start to feel a bit helpless. The uneasy feeling of not being able to touch the bottom of the ocean with my toes, left to the will of tides and the wind curled waves. When you are convinced things are not going your way, that ocean is not a good place to be. Worse still, worse than feeling things are out of control, is that I stop trying. The inevitability of bad luck extinguishes hope and the energy it gives us.

Luck then, as a way of describing events that happen to us, seems harmless enough. But to invest in luck, to store it up in charms and rituals and to bathe in its warmth when we are ‘feeling lucky’ and look to take more risks with the expectancy that things will go our way, that sound a little dangerous. That is to invite luck in to be the friend of hope, precious hope. I could live without luck, but to live without hope, no way. Luck is a fair-weather friend, whilst hope will see me though the good and the bad. When luck is running low, it will press hope to leave too. Inviting in luck is a dangerous thing.

Every Man an Island

He wasn’t really what I expected when I arrived. Over the phone he had mentioned that he had worked in law for many years, it was a strange thing to throw into the conversation – I took it to mean he might be a bit strange, strange or just a little drunk. I would learn that he had been a senior barrister’s clerk to a London based chamber, a very well paid job indeed, and something that clearly meant a lot to him.

He sat with me on a bench beside the window as I cut out the old putty from around the broken glass. You can usually tell when people want to take part in a little conversation, so I asked him the usual: renting or purchased; been here long; where did you move from; what do you do for a living; do you enjoy it… I’m not good at small talk so these stock questions seem to serve me well in situations like this. He reciprocated with similar questions and seemed genuinely interested, even a little intrigued. I could see him edging down the bench as I worked, looking up at me with puzzled eyes and an approving smile.

What seemed to have him so mystified was how it came to be that an architecture graduate was happily repairing his broken window. I think it’s the happiness part that he had the most difficulty with. I learned a little about his life as a barrister’s clerk, and how that came to be a story from his past. It was a past he was proud of and he still hadn’t come to terms with their decision to let him go, despite the passing years.

I tend to notice where I am, it is the architectural eye, and his spacious Victorian flat had the feel of faded wealth; it was starting to make sense. Something else I had noticed was the small white box marked Mirtazapine on the bureau. It just caught my eye, the familiar proportions of that little white box with its coloured banding. I might never have noticed it if I hadn’t known it so well.

He wanted to know how I it was that I had broken with a white collar career to become a handyman - how I had managed to start all over again. His curiosity stemmed from his own need to start again, to overcome the wounds and make a new living. Our conversation reminded me a lot about the emotional and financial trappings of our old life. I wonder how many of us, when we look back across our life’s decisions, can attribute the choices we made along the way to the will of others. The choices we made to make others happy, proud, to feel some worth in the eyes of others. He asked me a quite unexpected question; he asked if he and his partner could come to our wedding.

While he was in the bathroom the door bell rang. I answered it to a man with a beard so thick that I could barely understand anything he said. He spoke in mumbles, but somehow managed to get by communicating. He came in and made himself comfortable, taking out his tobacco pouch and cigarette papers. He was warmly welcomed. While I continued working these two men sat in the lounge making stop start conversation, seemingly eager for me to finish up. When it came time to present the bill he drew out his cheque book and very carefully touched his fountain pen to the page. What he the tore out and gave to me looked like the doodles of a three year old; it was anyone’s guess if the bank would accept this cheque. Actually they didn’t, and I wasted no time in returning to the flat to ask him to draw up another.

The bearded friend answered the door and ushered me in mumbling some more. The barrister’s clerk lay asleep across the sofa… a deep sleep. When does falling asleep become passing out? It took some time to wake him, and longer still to explain why I was there again. In the brief time that I had been away, he had downed a few drinks and passed out. When he woke he was disorientated, and then he began talking about his job again, only this time he broke down into tears. He sat there, apologising and sobbing and angry at it all, grimacing through the tears, hugging me.

He wasn’t coping, and what I was glimpsing were his habits, the daily routine that involved self medicating around 11am and the anesthetised day that followed. He wasn’t talking to anyone professionally, he wasn’t taking his medication, and his difficulties were compounded by alcohol. Wow, if I knew the hole that I had scrambled up from to get to where I am, then this was a man who had further to climb. For everything I know about my own journey, I realised then I knew nothing about the challenge that he faced or about where to start in helping him. Alcohol makes everything so complicated.