About there being no such thing as 'luck'

For years now, I have driven people of my acquaintance mad by the statement above; so much so, that I have to desist saying it every time I hear someone say, "Oh, I've been so lucky .....etc.". Don't believe it, it's not true.

Let's take the ordinary example of tossing a coin. Under normal circumstances, it is entirely impossible to predict which way it will fall but that doesn't mean that there is no cause for it's landing on its head or its tail.

What it does mean is that there are so many factors at play, the speed, direction, weight, external conditions, etc, that are 'unmeasurable', the outcome can be said to be unpredictable, unless there were some new, very hi-tech means to achieve this.

If something good comes as a result of our having called the 'right' result, we may feel that we have been 'lucky', when actually, it was pure science at play! Statistically, it is true that the more times a coin is tossed, the more the result will tend towards a 50/50 outcome; although it is possible, but highly unlikely, that 100 tosses could give 100 heads.

A personally irritating example is to be found in virtually every Wimbledon match commentary. Each time a player wins or loses a point due to the ball just rolling over or falling back from the net, it is said to be 'lucky' or 'unlucky' whereas that outcome is entiely due to the speed, direction and force of the winning or loosing player's shot.

There is, though, the element of chance. I wouldn't even like to begin to define the word but I do know that its mathematical and scientific study has formed the foundation of the subjects of Statistics and Probability and many of the advances in the modern world have come from the direction of those studies.

Take the example of a ticket being pulled out of a bag of raffle tickets. The hand goes in at a certain position and alights on one and decides to pick it out. If there are a hundred tickets and you have bought one of them then you have a 1 in a 100 chance of being the winner but it is entirely due to the circumstances of the shaking of the bag etc and the location of your ticket amongst all the others, another unknowable factor; merely science again.

The question is, "Does it really matter if we believe in good or bad 'luck'? Well I believe it does. In the case of 'good luck', it can perhaps make us feel that we are 'favoured' in some way, which we are not. In the case of so-called 'bad luck' it can make us feel that we are victims of 'fate', impotent, powerless against forces which we are unable to control or resist in any way. Whereas, if we believe that everything has a cause, then causes can be discerned and maybe overcome.

My scientific knowledge and (I'd like to believe) common sense, limited though they may be, tell me that every occurrence in life has a physical cause. Whether or not we can discern it is another matter but at least we can try!