What bad LUCK! Why am I always so unlucky?
By Papa Leow • 5 minute readI used to always feel that I am unlucky, or am the “Unfortunate One” whenever things did not go well for me at work or in life. It was not until I learnt about a highly interesting aspect of Life that I began to change my mentality and start questioning, “Why?”
Let me use the following phrase to share this aspect. Bear in mind what I am sharing is based on what I internalised and understood, and I hope it brings good use to someone out there too.
“欲知前世因，今生受者是。
欲知来世果，今生作者是.”
My translation (may not be 100% accurate):
“If one wants to find out the causal factors of occurrences, look at what happens in our current state of life. If one wants to find out what will happen in the future, look at what one does today.”
Simply put, to find out what caused our life to be the way it is today, we have to investigate what caused it to happen. The problem is, we are unable to investigate thoroughly, given our current wisdom and ability. Thus, we are unable to dig into the past to pinpoint the exact causal factor(s).
An example (though tough to understand and explain) would be to find out why and how someone would be born with a silver spoon. Many people would say it is luck. But have we really thought about the reason some are born with differing levels of spoon? Is it because of differing luck? Why does luck work in this manner? Is there a pattern to luck that we have not figured out? Is it truly random? Or, is there a true cause to the way things occur, which, because of our inability to see through, we claim as Luck? I believe this remains a question to many.
An (easier to understand) example would be to think about how someone ended up with very few friends who are willing to render assistance to him (in times of need). To find out the cause, we can look at this person’s interactions with other people — maybe he is always ill-tempered towards others, says nasty things of others, is short-fused and does not listen to others, or says things that causes woes/hurt to others. Hence, people naturally shun away from him, causing the way things are today for him. This should be simple to understand.
This “Cause & Effect” can be observed in every aspect of our lives, from crude and easy-to-understand scenarios, to intricate and almost impossible to investigate scenarios.
Interestingly, this phenomenon is neutral. It does not discriminate between good and bad. This means that, regardless of good or bad, there will be associated consequences. Simply, when we do good, we pass on something good. Similarly, when we do bad, we cause a chain of negative things to happen too.
However, I was taught that the crux of the phrase above lies in the second portion of it.
Since we already committed many actions and choices previously, we cannot stop the consequences from occurring anymore. Whatever ripple effect has already taken place, and there is no way we can stop it, without starting another chain of reaction again.
For example, if we decide to leave a small and “insignificant” piece of litter such as a straw on the beach and go home, this piece of plastic will drift around in the ocean for an unknown period of time, disintegrate, and one day get eaten by a fish because it looks like food to it. The fish will continue to eat more plastic and, like in a multimillion dollar lottery, one day return to our table as the fish we dine on over a Mother’s Day celebration. As we dine, we will end up eating the contaminated fish that eventually poisons us, causing hurt to our stomachs.
This sounds totally impossible because the chances are so low. Yet, on the other hand, it is also crazily possible, isn’t it? The very fact that we can neither 100% dismiss it, nor admit it for sure, goes to show the intricacies of Cause & Effect which we have an inadequate understanding of.
Often, because we cannot observe and explain the effect, we tend to take things for granted and/or misjudge the consequences of our actions.
I also questioned then why someone who does a lot of good end up suffering from an illness or encounter a tragic scenario. Then I asked myself to be honest, and look intricately into each of my actions and thoughts in every frame of time. I may think I have done a lot of good, but compared to the potentially undesirable things I have done outside of the times I do good, the good pales in comparison. Undesirable things, such as killing, stealing, sexual misconduct, saying untruths, flattery or indiscriminate and irresponsible speech, defamation, duplicity, greed, anger, and foolishness or the holding of mistaken views, may all seem like extreme acts of sin. However, if we are honest with ourselves and look at our lives in detail, we are constantly committing these acts. This then probably explains why and how a good person may suffer, or how an evil person may get away with his negative deeds, for both of them would have committed both positive and negative effects in their lives, in varying “proportions”.
So essentially, this phenomenon of Cause & Effect is so much more difficult to comprehend and observe than we think it is. However, we can for sure acknowledge that this ‘phenomenon’ of Cause & Effect does exist. Or rather, it is present in all that we do.
Therefore, in my opinion, it does not matter (as much) that things are the way they are today. For everything did happen for a (many) reason. While we may not always be able to find the reason(s), it is more important to focus in the moment, work on the next step forward, in order to sow the seeds of fruits that we desire for our future, because, there will definitely be consequences, whether we can see or feel it currently or not.
So bad luck bad luck, there must be a reason for the bad luck. We may not see the reason, but we do have the ability NOW to create the fruits of our future.
- This article originally appeared on Greening Away Blog and has been republished with permission.