Feeling Lucky During Unlucky Events

For the most part, I loosely believe in luck when it suits me. I tend to think of it as some mysterious supernatural guiding hand or invisible force granting favorable outcomes to select members of humanity at specific moments. I should also point out that my personal tendencies lean towards the existence of good luck versus bad luck.

Much of the time, when I feel like luck is on my side what I what I really mean is, Wow, that could have gone a whole lot worse! This is probably some type of coping mechanism that helps to make sense out of the randomness of life. There is a need to feel like someone or something is at the wheel taking care of things.

Merriam-Webster says that luck is:

merriam-webster definition of luck
a
: a force that brings good fortune or adversity
Luck was a big factor in the outcome.
b
: the events or circumstances that operate for or against an individual
The loser muttered something about bad luck.

When I read “a force” and “operate” in those definitions of luck it is hard to interpret it as passive. It sounds less like something you trip over versus that mysterious guiding hand I mentioned earlier. I dunno. Maybe none of it matters anyway. Maybe the key takeaway is whatever the goodness is, take it with a grateful heart.

As I started writing this in Indiana, Pennsylvania, it was zero dark thirty and I was waiting for Walmart’s tire center to open. I spotted a slash on the sidewall of my cars tire and wanted to replace it right away.

When I pulled up, the young guy at the greeter booth let me know that Walmart’s policy was to not replace a single tire on my AWD car, so my choice was to do all 4 tires or that I would have to go elsewhere. He then rhetorically asked ~ do you want to pay $700 or $120 and then casually pointed me to local shop.

Uh…okay? I wasn’t interested in asking anything further about the policy and tend to hate Walmart in general so I just moved along. When all was said and done, I had a new tire on my car and was under way in under 30 minutes. Can’t beat that.

I cannot help but consider my luckiness in this situation.

  • It’s my daughter’s car that I’m using and luckily this was not her problem to deal with
  • I didn’t have a blowout on the highway, which the tire guy suggested would have been likely
  • The tire place took me in immediately and got me out the door in 30 minutes
  • I didn’t run into problems while I had been rambling down some dirt forest roads; file under the right place at the right time
  • That I actually saw the slash at all; admittedly I don’t routinely look for such things
image of tire slash

While my morning got off to a not-so-perfect start, all things considered I felt pretty good. The weather was beautiful, I was roadtripping with my dog, seeing cool things, taking walks.

Lucky me.

Fuzzygalore

Rachael is the whimsical writer behind the 20+ year old Girlie Motorcycle Blog. As a freelance blogger, she is on a mission to inspire laughter, self-examination, curiosity, and human connection. Girlie Motorcycle Blog can be found on several Best Motorcycle Blog lists.

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3 Responses

  1. Chris says:

    Good thing you saw that and there was a shop that took you in right away.

  2. Ted Kettler says:

    So the sharply color yellow Vette isn’t yours??

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