...lucky charms...

My son thinks I'm lucky.

I can stay up late. I don't have homework. Such a lucky life.

I'm his calm-downer. I'm his cheer-oner.  Such a lucky charm.

~~~~~

There are those who, if I were to lay out my life side by side next to that of my peers, would undoubtedly proclaim me quite unlucky.  In fact, given a list of my mishaps, mistakes, misadventures and miseries...you might just agree with them.

I've had moments myself, when things have seemed so very grim and gray.  So many times when it felt as though the floor dropped out from beneath me, just as I was beginning to make some headway.  And in those moments I felt very unlucky indeed.  In those moments it was quite the simplest thing to do, to give into the urge to compare all my failures to the successes of everybody around me.  To wallow a bit, in the pretense that there wasn't any point in bothering because nothing would come out right anyhow. 

I'm lucky I'm made of sterner stuff than all that. 

I'm lucky I never wholly gave into it.

I'm lucky I survived...rearranged perhaps, but intact nonetheless. 

Luck itself seems such an undefinable term when applied to one's life.  Am I unlucky because the bad things happened? Or am I lucky because I made it through?  Am I unlucky because the plans I make don't turn out just right? Or am I lucky that the failures put me on new paths? 

I suppose it's really all just a matter of attitude.  Rather like determining whether you're a glass half-full or glass half-empty sort.  

If that's the case, then I get to decide. I get to decide that I'm lucky.  I get to decide that I'm charmed.  I get to decide that all those unlucky things...those mishaps, mistakes, misadventures and miseries...are all just fortune's way of preparing me to be in the right place at the right time.  

Look at that life of mine again, won't you? That one I've laid out.  Don't compare it to someone else's this time. Compare it instead, to all the different versions of itself that it could have been.  Compare it to the choices I could've made but didn't. Compare it to the moments that might have happened if I had given in.  Compare it to the life it might have ended up as, if I were not so stubborn.  

Remarkable, isn't it? How lucky I am.

How lucky you are.

How lucky we all are, when we choose to read our life as a series of happy moments instead of unfortunate events.

~~~~~

My son thinks I'm lucky. And he's right.

But what he hasn't quite caught onto yet...what life has not yet shown to him...is how lucky he is.

I know my son is lucky.

He rises to every challenge and surpasses it.  Out of limitations he creates new approaches. Such a lucky life.

He's my motivation. He's my determination.  Such a lucky charm. 

a few of the "lucky charms" i've collected