Creativity Q&A: What’s luck got to do with it?
Q: What is luck anyway?
I’ve always believed that good fortune is an essential ingredient to any success, and that it is ultimately something I cannot control. But my American wife grew up with the idea that luck is something you make for yourself. What light can the Wheel of Creativity shed on this dilemma?
A: Great question! And you’re both right! Let me explain a bit further.
In French, the word for luck is chance, which supports your lifelong belief that there is an element of chance involved in our lives. This mysterious force is unpredictable and beyond our control. At one level of awareness, this is true. At a deeper level of awareness lies a deeper level of truth.
Quantum Clovers
Quantum physics has a lot to say about our perception of chance events. Quantum theory purports that seemingly random events are actually linked by an invisible dynamic relationship of cause and effect. The bubbles on the surface of your boiling soup are actually linked together deeper in the pot by a connecting energetic force, in this case the heat of the stove.
The Wheel of Creativity expands on this idea, proposing that everything that exists is linked and the action of one thing causes reactions in all the others. One person’s need is another’s opportunity. One person’s passion is another person’s solution. Good luck occurs when the need and the solution meet, when both parties consciously engage with their particular place in life and bring into the world what they are here to bring.
When Luck Goes Missing
If the one does not feel the need and the other does not fill the need, the creative power of what binds us together is short-circuited. When we disconnect, we block the flow of creative energy. This kind of disconnection can occur in many ways, from depression to addiction, from materialism to poverty. But the result is the same: giver and receiver are not connected. Good luck goes missing.
This is a simplistic explanation, as sometimes the electricity of life flows on a direct current, sometimes it alternates. As I have experienced it, we are all in a dance with the creative force of Life. We do not control it. Rather we collaborate with it. Sometimes it leads; sometimes we do. This is expressed throughout many cultures as the active and receptive principles of life… Yin and Yang, Masculine and Feminine, Light and Dark.
From Either/Or to Both/And
So, I would say both you and your wife are correct. The force of Life is indeed beyond our control, but we can control our responses to it and what we create in the world as a result. My dear friend who lost her son a few years ago has taught me so much about this, that there are mysteries we will never understand and that our lives are the mosaics we make with the shards of what once was. Not only can we create what comes next. It is what we are here to do.
Do you feel lucky? Unlucky? Connect with others by sharing your story.
And live CREATIVE!
P.S. Got questions? Post them on the Wheel of Creativity Facebook page, and I’ll answer one here every Friday.
