An Appreciation of Chance and Luck Can Support the Practice of Gratitude
The underestimation of the role luck and chance play in our lives begins with our birth and only gets obnoxiously outside of any sense of personal control as our lives continue. Of course, just how long that life will be is in no small part determined by what state in the United States that you were born in, with the variation upwards of 6 years depending on if you were born in Washington (79.2 years) or Alabama (73.2 years). Moving beyond the U.S. to other countries, the difference can be from 86 years in Hong Kong to 55 in Nigeria. Concerning economic mobility, the extent to which you’re capable of moving upward in economic class is increasingly stagnant, so the class in which you were born in the United States is more than likely to be the one you spend your life (though there can be significant changes even within a broad class). Add changes of having to deal with various diseases and other illnesses based solely on whether one was born biologically male or female, and the result should be, or at least would make sense to be, an almost bone-deep cynicism towards one’s ability to make changes in one's life.
And yet, the complete opposite is the case. Repeatedly in poll after poll, the vast majority of people, particularly in the United States, state a belief that they possess a force that is outside the natural causation pattern of the universe: free will. Our legal system is almost entirely based on the assumption that a person can largely choose to do anything regardless of social circumstances. At the social level of day-to-day interactions, in what sociologists and psychologists refer to as the “fundamental attribution error,” our moral judgments about others (we tend to give ourselves more leeway) are almost entirely based on a belief that the person could have done something different even in the exact same circumstances.
This dichotomy of public belief in one’s capacity to make changes and direct one's life versus the many variables of natural reality curbing personal outcomes is why we love stories of people ‘overcoming the odds,’ lucky saves, and some variation of David v Goliath. Amusingly, as an aside, the very phrase ‘overcome the odds’ is a tacit acknowledgment that outcomes for people are largely outside their control. Still, the phrase is used to support confirming a bias of the opposite assessment.
I appreciate lucky-save stories. Video after video carries an emotional weight far greater than it should since I don’t personally know any of these people, but the response can’t be helped. Seeing each person survive by the merest, slightest of chances brings excitement every time. Were a microphone to be present at the time for people watching, a common phrase after would be "Whoa! That was lucky!" though perhaps with a great deal more cursing involved. One of many video compilations, not for the faint of heart, on YouTube, showing bare misses, has been viewed more than 15 million times in just the last couple of years. There are plenty more collections like it.
Changing Luck to Choice
All stories change over time. Many stories that begin with luck will then change to personal choice. Increasingly, the focus is no longer on how the vehicle missed but on how "I" was able to get out of the way. We change the focus from the nearly infinite number of things that needed to happen at the time to bring about the outcome, all of which we had zero influence over, to the self-proclaimed power of our choice and will.
To help see the danger of shifting these stories, if one were to shift perspective to the flip side and note just how many people aren't lucky and didn’t move in time in similar circumstances, suddenly the affirmation of our power turns into a judgment on the other person’s lack of it. We like to hear of the lone survivor and then don’t pay attention to the subtle unspoken judgment we’ve then placed on everyone who perished. The reality of chance is the storm falls where it will. Luck is just the personalized ownership of chance, the ego expansion beyond one’s skin to that of our capacity to shape reality itself.
This tendency to personalize chance is bound within the way we tell our personal narratives. Story-telling is essentially memory-reconstruction, the shaping of the myriad components making up an experience, to make sense to us in the moment. As Daniel Schacter (2002) puts it:
"...we tend to think of memories as snapshots from family albums that, if stored properly, could be retrieved in precisely the same condition in which they were put away. But we now know that we do not record our experiences the way a camera records them. Our memories work differently. We extract key elements from our experiences and store them. We then recreate or reconstruct our experiences rather than retrieve copies of them. Sometimes, in the process of reconstructing we add on feelings, beliefs, or even knowledge we obtained after the experience. In other words, we bias our memories of the past by attributing to them emotions or knowledge we acquired after the event."
In an echo of the ‘fundamental attribution error,’ Robert Frank (2016) takes this mental confabulating into the realm of financial success, noting:
"According to the Pew Research Center, people in higher income brackets are much more likely than those with lower incomes to say that individuals get rich primarily because they work hard. Other surveys bear this out: Wealthy people overwhelmingly attribute their own success to hard work rather than to factors like luck or being in the right place at the right time."
Note the underlying assumptions, where the belief by those now wealthy that hard-work rather than chance led to their success, is based on the notion of individual rightness, of having personally acted in such a way as to overcome the influences that would have sent the person down another financial path. This feeling of self-right-eousness, or pride, is based almost entirely on an ignorance of supporting variables.
Pride is not limited to financial success, it is a descriptive feeling at the heart of any self-story that is concerned with one’s tacit belief in shaping reality despite, or indeed in the direct face of, contrary influences. Thankfully, our capacity to expand our perspective doesn't require an act of god, or hours a day of meditation. We can learn to pause when telling stories about our actions, to incorporate a greater appreciation for the multi-level world of influences in our lives.
Chance to Gratitude
Consider all the factors that went into the journey of getting to where you are now. The family you were born into. The socio-cultural space the family resides in and what religion and political beliefs they identify with. The moral beliefs instilled that curb certain behaviors. The institutional structures that provide boundaries for self-expression, with everything from the number of food choices you have to what schools you can attend. The environmental variables that inspire ideas and behavior, like whether you live near hiking trails. This is not a denial of one's personal agency so much as a broadening recognition that where we end up, whether it be within a social movement or possessing a large bank account, has at least as much to do with factors outside of our immediate control as it does any active choice we make.
Every governmental and legal system has a cultural and familial background. For every road travelled and delivery system utilized, there are educational opportunities and temperaments that support and direct our attention to particular ideas over others. An appreciation for the role chance and luck play in our lives is a push towards having a greater compassion towards others and ourselves. “There but for the grace of god go I” or, more secularly, replace “god” with “chance,” can inspire us to be grateful for what we have and seek out the opportunities that reside where we’re at. Rather than getting stuck on comparisons of outcomes based on things outside our control, we can instead practice a gratitude that we are here, now, existing, and therefore engaged in pursuing the creation of meaning and purpose for which our species is uniquely capable of doing.
“Gratitude, in particular, is a currency we can spend freely without fear of bankruptcy" (Frank, 2016).
The lucky-save stories are a lot of fun, but they can remind us of all the pieces that had to happen for the outcome to be what it was, and how grateful we can be that we’re alive to appreciate the experience.
References:
Frank, Robert. (2016). The Atlantic. Why Luck Matters More Than You Might Think
Schacter, Daniel L. (2002-05-07). The Seven Sins of Memory: How the Mind Forgets and Remembers (p. 9). Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. Kindle Edition.