• Café Life is the Colony's main hangout, watering hole and meeting point.

    This is a place where you'll meet and make writing friends, and indulge in stratospherically-elevated wit or barometrically low humour.

    Some Colonists pop in religiously every day before or after work. Others we see here less regularly, but all are equally welcome. Two important grounds rules…

    • Don't give offence
    • Don't take offence

    We now allow political discussion, but strongly suggest it takes place in the Steam Room, which is a private sub-forum within Café Life. It’s only accessible to Full Members.

    You can dismiss this notice by clicking the "x" box

Thought for the Day The luck of....

Paul Whybrow

Paul Whybrow

Full Member
Joined
Jun 20, 2015
Location
Cornwall, UK
LitBits
0
"The luck of having talent is not enough; one must also have a talent for luck."

Hector Berlioz

berlioz_web10001-805715cb1a9a2e139efd5f54779ce5ead4958d1d.jpg
 
Luck is a knack for being in the right place at the right time. It does not imply any intrinsic superior worth or merit, but is a symptom of an upbeat personal energy. Other words for this or charm or charisma...a gift for making other people feel seen and heard. We see it right away with some people. It is temperamental or constitutional. It is an outlook shaped by the luck of possessing high levels animal vitality, which comes out to meet others with an inquiring outlook, regardless of, or notwithstanding any personal circumstances. Someone can still be lucky therefore, even if they are in other ways, unlucky.

Keats, lucky or unlucky? Unlucky, died far too young, and in great disappointment and sorrow, 'words writ on water'. Lucky, on the other hand, because he was much loved, died in the arms of friends and was posthumously published and now raised as a star in the firmament. The love of his friends brought him to publication. How many other writers, equally as marvellous, have escaped the attention of history? This of course, we shall never know.
 
Or else we could call it divine intervention. Il Matrimonio many years ago was in the army air corps for a while, had a helicopter tail rotor failure at 4000 ft which meant the pedals didn't work, that help you steer in for landing. The textbook said he should come back to a speed of 35 knots, makes pedals superfluous, turn off engine and drop vertically, but he thought eff that. I will be killed. Instead he came down very fast and low to take his chances near the ground. Was criticized for not using the protocol, but something in him over rode it. Maybe he would have been OK had he done it by the book, but his instinct said otherwise. The inner voice that some might call divine intervention. And who is to say it isn't that. The thing is, feeling confident to decide when to trust it.
 
Or fate. Yes indeed. Destiny. Berlioz's comment, his choice of word, a TALENT for luck, though, suggests some kind of synergy at work; a meeting point of fate with a person's positioning, calculations, or energy levels or energy field.
 
Someone said to a famous golfer, that he was lucky, and he replied that, wasn't it funny how, the more he practiced, the luckier he got.

Yes BUT. Who gave him his first golf club, his first go at golf? The right conditions just when he needed it? The absence of illness or injury that enables him to keep on doing what he loves?

He could still thank his lucky stars, I reckon.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Café Life Tag Cloud

agent author authors book books cafe calls for submissions competition conferences contests creative writing editing fantasy fear fiction genre greetings huddle inspiration life literature litopia motivation new new member novel novels november philosophy poetry publishing reading romance science fiction self-publishing short stories short story stories story submissions time vanity winners words world writer writers writing writing contests zodiac
Back
Top