On Not Being Able to Believe Your Own Luck

It would be natural to assume that luck was something it was very easy indeed to believe in: what could be more natural than to be hugely grateful and careful when – for example – one is given a break at work, or suddenly meets a truly loving and kind person, or falls in with a group of warm and supportive friends?

But to assume that any of this is necessarily straightforward to take on board and manage is to miss one of the great paradoxes of human nature. In truth, being able to believe in one’s luck – that is, being capable of cherishing the good things and people that fate and accident throw one’s way – belongs to a mighty psychological accomplishment, largely unconscious, which is dependent on a very specific path from childhood through to maturity.

For some of us, the lucky breaks – when they finally come along – far from being simple to assimilate and build upon, set off an insuperable background level of anxiety that may end up with us destroying much that we ostensibly want. At one level, we are, of course, grateful (how delightful that we now have some money or that there’s a very kind person in our lives), but at another, the goodness can be far too troubling and unfamiliar to internalise and cherish.

We need to look backwards to understand. Our whole lives may have been structured around the need to master deprivation and withstand horrific amounts of bad luck. Our personalities emerged from having to deal with the very opposite of good fortune: an angry father, a withholding mother, a jealous sister, a harsh school environment, a poor neighbourhood.

We adjusted well enough; we made our home among the ruins and the neglect. But it’s now precisely our skill at managing bad luck that makes the absorption of its opposite so tricky. When a person has to do everything to accommodate things that are so bad they shouldn’t be true but are, they will be at grave risk of disbelieving in good things that usually aren’t true but now happen to be so. Whatever their theoretical devotion to happiness, their equilibrium depends on ensuring a steady supply of pain.

We – the bad-luck-adapted ones – therefore have a horrifying habit (which we tend to notice only years after the event) of blowing up good fortune when it crosses our path. Without properly meaning to, we alienate the lovely new friends we have made. We annoy the bosses who believed in us. We get ourselves thrown out of the club that allowed us in. And – most tragically of all – we drive away (through bad moods and inconsistency, random accusations and unreliability) the uniquely kind and devoted lovers who wanted nothing more than to build a life with us.

We didn’t feel we deserved any of the blessings we stumbled on – and somehow made extremely sure we therefore wouldn’t have to bear them for long.

If we recognise any of ourselves in this sorrowful portrait, we need to take immense care not to destroy anything more of the beauty that life sends our way – at the same time as taking ample stock of the temptation. We suffered so much at our start; we cannot allow our powers of resignation and self-denial to rob us of any more of the gifts that fortune might yet throw our way.