On Being Lucky

One of best friends from high school often proclaimed that I was a very lucky person.
Her reasons were;
a) My family was/is relatively well off,
b) I got to attend a very prestigious school for my undergraduate studies,
c) I got the chance to study abroad (twice),
d) I got to travel and “see” the world from a young age, and
e) Everyone appears to love me

I often argued that I wasn’t lucky but I seized numerous opportunities that happened to cross my path. Yet she always insisted that I was one of the few lucky people she had met in her life. Usually I will argue with her by stating that I am pragmatic person but lately, I have accepted that fact that I am indeed a lucky (or perhaps a privileged) person in some aspects of my life.

In high school, a good friend of mine and me had a pact that we will be one of the most successful students from our high school. He proclaimed that we would have the hottest wives in the world, earn lots of money, and become pioneers for the next big thing. In retrospect, it was quite interesting thinking of how I saw myself in high school. Oh the naïveté.

Nevertheless, he was (and probably still is) an incredibly intelligent fellow and got the opportunity to attend one of esteemed maths and science academies in the US during our third year of high school. Unfortunately, he came back to our high school during our final year as he couldn’t handle the intense pressure at the maths and science academy.

I came out to him before we left for college and he didn’t even bat an eye. To him it was a non event. We continued to hangout as we habitually did. We still remained close friends as when we went off to college but we didn’t communicate as much as we did in high school. When I went home for short breaks or when I had the chance to talk to him, he would go on about how he would make more money and how he has countless internships lined up and he has great friends in college. Since he was studying engineering/computer science, he did have all those wonderful things lined up for him. His constant need to mention his potential financial successes at every opportunity got tiring very quickly. I got annoyed because that was all he wanted to talk about. This lead to a quandary in our friendship and we barely stayed in touch. Facebook became our default medium of communication.

Fast forward to 2014, my friend contacted via Facebook and he’s in a very dark place right now. I am not going to air what he told me in confidence but it really made me realise how lucky I am. I don’t even know how to help him and I feel as though me just being there is simply not enough. While I have never (and hopefully never will) hit rock bottom, I have been in situations where I felt my life was a wreck but I always had someone willing to help me unconditionally. I always manage to get myself up and I forever grateful for those who are there when I take a tumble.

I never thought I was lucky. I believed in calculated probabilities with high rates of positive outcomes. Now I truly believe that I have been blessed with high rates of unforeseen successes in my life and count myself very lucky.