Why I don't believe in luck

Many people think I'm lucky to be living in Dubai, not working, where the sun shines and the financial freedom to support our children and to travel freely to visit them when I choose.

I don't think I'm lucky at all. I think this comes down to my husband having worked hard throughout school, obtaining a degree and choosing his career path that led him down the road of a working life abroad.

I've been told I'm lucky to have met and married my husband, but I don't think luck paid a part there at all, it devalues our relationship and says little about me really.

Saying my husband is lucky to have his job, undermines his hard work and his life choices. But then of course he did benefit from a free University education, but so did everyone else of his generation, including me, but I didn't take that route. I opted to go down that road with a student loan in 2005.

My kids are lucky though, they benefit from our hard work, but that luck is only the starting point, they have to make the next move, take that luck and continue to work hard, choose their own life paths and make their own choices.

My kids are not lucky because they have parents who can financially support them with their life choices, because we don't. We may have put our youngest through boarding school, but that didn't automatically buy him an education, he still had to physically and mentally put the work in. It hasn't opened doors into the world of work, he still has to go through the same channels as everyone else, application forms, interviews and rejections. He went to boarding school because his educational needs weren't supported in South Africa where we chose to live, it was a huge emotional and financial sacrifice to make that decision, but we weren't lucky we could afford that choice, we actually had limited choices.

Is he lucky because he can live in our 1 bed flat we bought while he waits to find a job? No. We only bought the flat because we needed somewhere to stay when we visited family in the UK, where I spend half my year, due to my husband working abroad. Our other children got to stay living at home in a family environment, got to come home from school/college each day to their family and a cooked meal. They didn't have to live on their own. Most of our friends with 18+ year olds either still have their kids living at home while they look for work or save for their future or are at University and can pop home on weekends. Ours can't, he's 3000 miles away.

I've been genuinely lucky twice in my life, where it hasn't cost me money or much effort. On both occasions involving free trips to sporting events. Filling in my personal details on competition forms and posting them off in time and relying on the 'luck of the draw'. I went to the Olympic games in Barcelona in 1992 and the Rugby 7's in Hong Kong in 2017.

I've never been upgraded on a flight, but I've had empty seats allowing me to stretch out and sleep on a long haul flight. I've managed to bag the last parking space right by the door when I've been running late for an event and I sat online once for several hours to get Peter tickets for the Led Zeppelin reunion at the O2 arena in 2007, but that cost me £300.

Do you consider yourself lucky?

I really object when people tell me how lucky I am, lucky to live in the sun, lucky to be able not to have to work, lucky to have met my husband, lucky to be able to send my son to boarding school, lucky to go on holiday, lucky, lucky, lucky.

I don’t believe in that kind of luck. To me luck is being dealt the right cards in a poker game, luck is being the 100^th customer in a store and winning your shopping, luck is being handed the keys to a brand new car because you happen to remind someone of their dear departed mother.

Luck did not enter my mind when my husband or I completed our degrees, luck did not get my husband a job that moved us to South Africa, luck did not come into the picture when we decided to send our son back to boarding school in the UK because his dyslexia could not be supported in South Africa, luck did not make my husband fall in love with me or me with him, luck does not enter the equation when we plan and book our holidays.

I’m not lucky not having to work, I live in a country where I’m not permitted to work and telling me the sun must help when I feel depressed certainly doesn’t make me feel lucky, it makes me feel sad that you think that I don’t have the right to be depressed as I’m lucky having everything. But I don’t have everything, I don’t have luck, I have a daily struggle to keep it together, a daily struggle to see a future, a daily battle with depression and if you’re interested the sun doesn't help, it makes me feel lethargic, not lucky.

I am NOT lucky, this has all been hard work

What does the word Lucky mean to you?

The dictionary definition of lucky is 'having, bringing or resulting in good luck'
The dictionary definition of luck is 'anything that happens by chance, an advantage or sucess due to chance'

So Lucky means to me that someone happens to be stood near me as I trip and they catch me....or I knock a glass out the cupboard, fumble around with it in mid air and catch it just as it hits the ground. Or I roll double six, 10 times in a row to win big in Vegas.

Are you with me so far?

I'm sick to death or being told how lucky I am, to have met my husband, that he has a good job, that we have a nice life style, can afford holidays and live in South Africa, Lucky that I don't have to work, lucky, lucky, lucky.

Well let me tell you and let's clear this up right away. So you're telling me I was unlucky with my first choice of husband? I was unlucky to have 3 wonderful and handsome boys. I was unlucky that I had a crap car and couldn't afford holidays.....oh you don't mean that do you?

Was it luck that I just happened to work as a family support worker? after being lucky to have a NVQ 3 in child care. Was my husband lucky that his wife left him and he needed care for his profoundly disabled daughter and wasn't it lucky that I just happened to be available.

Oh and then I was lucky that he fell in love with me, I was lucky now to be Mum to 5 kids, it was lucky he'd done a degree after school and worked hard, it was lucky that because he had his degree we could afford a house for all 7 of us to live in, lucky that I was able to go to Uni and get a degree, lucky that someone gave me a job, because I had that degree, lucky we could buy nice cars and have foreign holidays?????

Need I go on? Apparently so, because I'm lucky to be living here in South Africa, it had nothing to do with leaving 3 kids behind and all our family in the UK and absolutly nothing to do with my husband having worked hard to get this position.

No, it appears that everytime I just happen to be standing somewhere like outside a travel agents and someone walks out and says 'this is your lucky day' I've decided to pay for your family to go on holiday'
or the other time I was stood at the bus stop and this guy day, pulls up in his car and says 'this is your lucky day, here have my car I don't need it anymore'

So if it's not luck, is it fate? (the power that predetermines events) or is it as I believe just good old fashioned hard work and having made the right choices in life?