Summer is not the best of seasons to sit in front of a monitor and write essays of any kind, especially if one lives in North America or Europe where there is always something in the wind or sky or in the feeding frenzy of birds to remind us that autumn, the harbinger of yet another winter of sleet and slush, cannot be too far away. But as much as I tried not to touch my keyboard and click away into the fascinating albeit mind-boggling world of the Internet I could not resist the temptation of jotting down a few mental notes on a topic that has been occupying my mind lately but for which I was finding it extremely hard to find an appropriate title. But as fate would have it, the title I have selected for this essay came quite haphazardly from the mouth of a very distinguished visitor, a sister-in-law of mine, who very surreptitiously proffered words of profound wisdom to the effect that life should be enjoyed to the full carpe diem without too much afterthought or overworrying about the future. If she ever finds the time to read the current essay which I dedicate to her, I would like her to know that her advice is not being taken lightly but will be followed to the letter and treasured like the precious gem that it was, to be kept in the treasure-box of life and only shared with the very best of friends.

During my sister-in-law's very short but most fruitful visit, we had ample opportunity to discuss about life's trials and tribulations, about the need to feel and think positive, the importance in this day and age of being assertive and not dwelling too much on the past. Any one these topics could provide the basis for a lengthy discussion on the why and wherefore of our existence on this planet and we could if we wished argue ad nauseam on what makes some so successful and happy and umpteen others so unlucky and miserable. But I have chosen to limit myself at least for the purpose of the present discussion to the age-old question of luck or ill-luck. For if there is something most men and women have been interested in from time immemorial and which for all intents and purposes will continue to generate a lot of interest, it is beyond any doubt this four-letter word: luck or the lack of it. Is there such a thing as luck and if so, why do some individuals seem to be luckier than others? I cautiously use the words "seem to be" for there is plenty of evidence to prove that more often than not there is more to luck than meets the eye. In dealing with luck, we cannot of course do without a few references to the Bible and we will do just that to see if we can find inspiration in the words of God in our daily search for material and spiritual happiness.

As far as the Scriptures go, Jesus used the word "chance" i.e. luck only once and you will agree with me that an argument that is based on such an isolated saying cannot be sustained for long. Jesus may have used the term in the context of a story and possibly did not expect it to be taken too seriously. According to Luke, when Jesus told the story of the good Samaritan, he said, "By chance there came down a certain priest that way," but it would be foolhardy to hang an argument on such flimsy evidence.

Since we already quoted a few words from the New Testament, it would suit our purpose here to quote something from the Old Testament to illustrate how luck, whether we believe in it or not, had a say in what happened to Ruth, undoubtedly one of the most beautiful passages in the Bible. As my readers will remember, Naomi, bereft of her husband and sons, decided to return to Bethlehem and assumed that her daughters-in-law would not wish to go with her into a strange land. Orpah did indeed part from her, but Ruth flatly refused to do the same: Ruth 1:16. And Ruth said, Entreat me not to leave thee ...for whither thou goest, I will go, and where thou lodgest, I will lodge; thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God;...and the two go to Bethlehem. In Bethlehem Ruth meets Boaz, a rich relative of Naomi's, who is attracted to the girl despite the fact that she is a foreigner, and is grateful to her for the love and care she shows Naomi. Naomi shrewdly arranges matters so that Boaz ends up proposing to Ruth and they get married in full traditional style. Eventually Ruth bears a son, which comforts Naomi for her own lost sons. Ruth, her loyal daughter-in-law, although a Moabitess, is now considered a fully assimilated member of the community and the Israelite women praise her to the skies, telling Naomi that Ruth is worth to her more than seven sons. Because of a stroke of luck, Ruth has remained ever since, to all men, one of the most attractive women in the Bible. Without this chance meeting with Boaz, Ruth would not have become the great-grandmother of Israel's future hero-king David.

The story of Ruth is not only about luck and how it shapes history but also about racial tolerance. For Ruth was a Moabitess, which makes David part Moabite in ancestry. Moabites and particularly Moabitesses had a bad reputation among the Israelites for they were allegedly the worst corrupters one could meet as evidenced by the Book of Numbers and when the Jews returned from exile, they were bitterly anxious to purify their land from the strangers who had been settled on it during the Exile. Their leaders established a rigid and narrow racial policy by which all intermarriage with foreigners was forbidden and all who had already married foreign wives had to put them away. So Ruth was essentially written as a clarion call for universality and for the recognition of the brotherhood of man. To Christians, Ruth is all the more important for through David, she was an ancestress of Jesus, and therefore the tale tends to reinforce the Christian view of the Messiah, that he is for all mankind and not for the Jews alone.

Many out there are of the opinion that everything that happens in our lives is the will of God. Even those who are not Christians believe in something extra-terrestrial or extra-corporeal that somehow determines beyond their own control what is to accrue to them. However logical they may pretend to be, they find no contradiction in their beliefs in cosmic forces that seem to make hell or heaven out of their lives. Here, of course, the phrase "the will of God" is very loosely used even by devout Christians. Maybe it would be more appropriate to say that everything that happens is within the will of God and that there is a distinction between those things which God intends to happen and those things which he allows to happen. In other words, the phrase "the will of God" should perhaps be used only for those things which God intends. Philosophy is all about juggling with words with the express intent of elucidating profound mysteries and there is a kind of conundrum in calling the things God allows his will for if anything he wills to allow them. I hope you can follow me to this point. Here is an example to shed some light in the dark tunnel we are entering: a mother teaches her child to walk on the soft carpet of her living room. She occasionally allows him or her to stumble or ever to fall. Of course she does not intend the child to fall or she would push the latter over.

The most intriguing and puzzling question one can ask anyone is this: How can God, if he is so perfect and loving, will man or woman who is made in his image to know suffering which he does not and cannot know for purportedly he is not flesh but pure spirit? My faith and yours as Christians leads us to reject that God can deliberately want us to suffer and know nothing but pain and misery in our earthbound existence. We as Christians know that Jesus went about healing the lame and the sick and gave his own life for our salvation. Even from a logical standpoint it would not make any sense to say that God wills our suffering for a Creator creates with the intention of perfection and could not will, in the normal sense, the faulty functioning of anything in his creation. In other words, the intention of every creator is to achieve perfection in the created object. The people who call suffering the will of God are usually those who always send for the doctor when they are ill. But where is their logic if if they at the same time believe that it is God's will for them to be sick. If suffering is God's will, then as Christians we should not pay the doctor to defeat God's will for that obviously would come to naught.

In a recent conversation I had with a long-time friend who is going through a traumatic period of her life, she confessed that she no longer believed in the existence of God and that life had no real meaning for everything in the universe was utterly senseless propelled it would seem by random forces that cared not a hoot about who went to church or not. In her new way of looking at life, morality was just another of those convenient shams that humanity pays lip service to for fear of becoming social outcasts and there was absolutely no difference between animals and humans for they were both subject to the same primeval forces that give preeminence to the strongest and condem the weaklings to either total subservience or a life of abject misery. My friend who is endowed with above average intelligence and possesses a universal culture that would make any parent proud felt that she had no reason to feel cheerful about life. All the books that she had read - and she has read volumes and volumes in several languages - had literally brought her to an impasse. Why does she feel the way she does? Did God will her to feel so distraught and empty inside? Did fate or ill-luck have something to do in making her prone to such bouts of depression? Psychiatrists would have a field day advancing their theories and offering suggestions on how to better the odds in her case and getting her to think pink again. Science usually is of the conviction that where there is a will there is a way but when it comes to the workings of the mind and the nature of the soul I personally think that most scientists are as yet as ignorant of such matters as chimpanzees would be of how they got to be here in the first place.

Is life governed by luck? I dare to say that life is not a matter of luck or ill-luck but rather a matter of our reaction to it. In the first place it is well to remember that one of the factors which makes an incident an accident is the ignorance of man about it. It is something man could not foresee. But of course to God everything is known. God knew all along that the accident was going to happen. But will you agree with me that his knowing did not condition the accident. The accident conditioned his knowing. Knowing is not a causative factor in regard to the future any more than it is in regard to the past.

Not only Christians but also those who have a certain philosophy of life seek guidance from a higher sphere at one stage or another of their lives. For most, living a good life will necessarily be conditioned by their material comfort or success and for others attending mass every now and then is in a way an attempt to hedge their bets and propitiate God or the gods for a little bit of luck that would make life worth while. After all, who wants to be in the doldrums all the time and have nothing to look forward to? Even a prisoner who is condemned to stay behind bars for life harbours some hope of being free one day through sheer luck or a miracle. If one does not believe in luck, why play the lottery? If one believes that there is no such thing as luck, why does one cross oneself at the first sign of trouble? Call it superstition or by any other name, luck is what seems to motivate many a man's endeavours. There is nothing that people would not do to improve their lot and have an easier life. Whether we do it through hard work or by trying our luck at the casino, the motivation is the same: we want society to consider us lucky and not failures.

But is luck all that important when all is said and done? Many things which we think of as vitally important and within a certain plan are not in my opinion nearly as important as we might think. Does it really matter whether I live in Mauritius or in Toronto? Indeed, does it really matter even if I fall from the roof and give up the ghost before my allotted time? Will my death mean anything to the rest of the world? Does it finally matter whether in this life I am a doctor, lawyer or a simple translator? Most people attribute so much importance to titles and other status symbols that by the time they obtain them they already have a foot in the grave. Is it all worth it? Yes, absolutely, if the purpose of all our striving is to make us better individuals from a spiritual viewpoint. But absolutely not, if it is only to live a life of comfort and luxury at the expense of others and to the point of forgetting that we are all equals in the eyes of God and that however successful we become in life we are in the final analysis all so vulnerable to the ravages of time. Many forget to smile or greet those who are perceived to have had less luck therefore less success, thereby making fools of themselves in the eyes of their Creator and being the laughing-stock of those they come into contact with. The ancient Greeks were very wary of their own success for they knew all too well that their gods were jealous and did not look too kindly on those who dressed themselves in divine clothes. All their lives were spent propitiating the gods and maybe we should do as much if we wanted to be truly lucky i.e. have our Creator look kindly and gently on our mortal souls and not care too much about human flattery and adulation which are all too fleeting.

Carpe diem would indeed be a good dictum if we could lift our luck into God's purposes. As I sit inside and type away thinking of all those who mean so much to me, of all those who know and who do not know me, I know deep down that up on the hills out there somewhere the little brooks are bubbling with divine happiness and far away in Alaska or British Columbia swollen rivers are dashing in glorious tumult down hillsides into rivers that flow into valleys that are too beautiful for mortal eyes to behold. Life is everywhere and will continue teeming long after we are all gone. Nature is indeed luckier than all of us for it is there with or without us. A grain of sand has more poetry in it than all the poetry we can find in all Shakespeare. You don't believe me? Go and take a walk on the nearest beach and feel the sand beneath your feet and you will know what I mean. All this I feel and you too and yet you look at me as a total stranger, stopping at the ephemeral, the physical imperfections, and not at the total being, at the inner being. You are my brother and my sister, my double, my soul companion in the vast track of this wide and mysterious universe. Why don't we look into each other's eyes for once with utter sincerity and dwell in each other's sacred temple? Why not sing songs of joy until we fill our hearts with utter delight? There is so much room for love and so little time to do the loving. Trapped as we are in our petty selves, we lose sight of what would make us truly immortal. I have seen the light of day in one blissful moment of mystic illumination and ever since the sky is within my reach and all the birds sing high and low just for me. The leaves rustle yet again and my heart throbs like never before. Join me in the fun of living and of loving. Meet me halfway and we will sail together on an ocean of gentle surf and enchanting mermaids. Luck or ill-luck, we will make the most of life, After all, isn't it true to say that luck is there for the taking by those who dare to believe in themselves and do not sit and mope like some we all know of who cannot let go of the past and spend all their vital energy regretting what cannot be instead of grasping and enjoying the good things of life. Carpe diem indeed!. A motto by which we could all live by for the rest of our days.

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Author: Claudio Wye