People & Places – Page 15 – Mo's Marketplace

Introverts and Writing

I spend a lot of time in my own head. Its a trait of the introverted. It gives me time to regroup, think things over, gain a little understanding. Sometimes, though, the net effect is that people around me think I’m checked out, or that I’m distant or don’t care. I really do like parties, but I prefer to spend time with people one-on-one. I’m not anti-social – far from it – however the energy it takes to handle interacting with large groups of people takes me a lot of time to rejuvenate.

I also struggle a lot with self-confidence. I had a hard time speaking up for fear of looking foolish – even when I have specific, well founded ideas. I worry about finding the right word to get my point across, and because I’m spending time searching for those words it frustrates people while they wait for me to get that word. Most people are satisfied with the word that’s “close enough,” but that’s not me…I’ve learned that if I’m not specific, I spend more time explaining nuance. Nuance which is then lost on most people.

Writing is always a good means to get thoughts out of my head – I can take the time to be reasonably specific, take the time to sort through my thoughts, and reach out to the outside world. The problem is, sometimes, no matter how much I’ve thought about something, I just can’t come up with something to write. Imagine that – spending so much time in my own head, and I don’t have anything to say.

I can be a text book case study of an introvert. I’m told I have a unique point of view, that I process information differently than others. I make connections that others don’t.

With Introverted Intuition dominating their personality, INTJs focus their energy on observing the world, and generating ideas and possibilities. Their mind constantly gathers information and makes associations about it. They are tremendously insightful and usually are very quick to understand new ideas. (http://www.personalitypage.com/INTJ.html)

That’s pretty much me.

So, with all of that as introduction, I’ve got nothing. No interesting connections, no funny observations, and no ideas. Just a lot of nothing…I guess I’ll just have to think about that.

Power of Symbols

The day after Superbowl XLII, a game lost by the New England Patriots in the last 90 seconds after an 18-0 season, I wore a winter jacket emblazoned with the “Flying Elvis” logo of the team. I would have worn it if they won, and I hated the thought of being a hypocrite – for me supporting my team isn’t about associating myself with winning. For the love of God, I’m a middle-aged Red Sox fan – I know for a fact it’s a lot more fun to associate yourself with winning than with losing, but for the majority of my life associating myself with the Red Sox was more about humilation. In fact, Massachusetts released Red Sox license plates in 2003. I got mine just before the whole Grady Little/Pedro Martinez blunder in Game 7 of the ALCS. There I was driving around wearing shame on my car for an entire year.

There was a point at which I was heavy into flags. I acquired all kinds of flags to display outside – countries I’d visited, sports championships, historical flags. One of my favorite ones was the yellowGadsden flag. I had begun displaying it in support of the US armed forces and as a message of defiance to those who would do harm to this country.

Funny thing about symbols and flags, though. A symbol replaces words. It holds meaning to those who display it and who observe it, but those meanings may not be the same and what we take from those can be very different. For me, when I fly an American flag, I’m proud of my country and for what it stands. I am proud of our system of law, I am proud a country of this size and power can transition political power will a ballot cast by the people and not at the mouth of a rifle. In many countries, vacuums of power typically follow transitions of leadership wherein despots and others will take the opportunity to seize it. This is a message I am proud to make.

However, for people in other parts of the world, it can be a symbol of oppression and of violence – whether that is right or wrong. When you choose to accept a symbol, you choose all connotations of that symbol. I fly the American flag because I accept all connotations, can and will argue with those who express a negative association with it.

Sadly, there are those who choose to appropriate symbols to increase the credibility of their own cause and to create the perception of a cohesive message in lieu of actually having a cohesive message.

I no longer fly that Gadsden flag. It is a message several centuries old and for me the meaning of which is rooted in the earliest history of the United States. However, the political opportunists associated with the Tea Party have appropriated the meaning of the flag – at least for now, after all the flag itself is a couple hundred years old. The Tea Party is a movement with no true cohesion, no formal set of guiding principals, and no structure of which to speak. The Gadsden flag gives meaning to a structure without meaning on its own. Since I don’t know what meanings and associations I’m taking on when I associate myself with it, I choose not to make any statement with the flag.

You cannot pick and choose what meaning you’re advocating when displaying a symbol – you accept them all, which is what makes a symbol so powerful, but interestingly not displaying a symbol can be just as powerful.

Earlier this month, we were asked to wear the color purple to memorialize and support several students who had committed suicide after prolonged bullying. Imagine feeling so hopeless and so helpless that you feel the only way to escape the daily torment is to kill yourself. I was never the popular kid, but I never – not once – felt so out of control that I felt I had to take drastic measure to escape. There are few things I support in life more than the equality of all people and their right to be themselves – indeed, see my thoughts above regarding my flag. No child should be emotionally tortured because their sexual orientation may not be “traditional.”

However, I chose not to participate. By choosing not to participate, I was not rejecting the premise and not rejecting the support of those who may need it. I was rejecting the notion that this was the only way in which we acknowledge our caring. The color purple means nothing to me – I have no basis on which to draw an association between purple and anti-bullying. If I do not understand the associations behind the symbol, I’m not sure I’m willing to display the symbol. It doesn’t I don’t support those being bullied. It means that I’m not bought into the symbol and it’s meaning. Much like those who associate meaning for the Tea Party with the Gadsden Flag – they don’t know what they’re buying when they display the flag in general or with the Tea Party in specific, they just know they’re pissed off.

I’m pissed off that a child feels the only way out of a bad situation is to kill him or herself. I’m pissed off that the adults in these kids’ lives are either so oblivious or don’t care enough to find out what is going on in their lives, that those adults haven’t created a situation where that child feels safe telling them about their trouble. I’m pissed that the adults in these kids lives have allowed these children’s peers to gain social power in a culture of violence. I’m pissed that bullies have been empowered to do their deed unchecked.

I feel sad for these kids. I don’t know that I need to display purple to express this. I’m not even sure you could get a consistent definition of “bullying” from those who did participate. We do more to support the victims of bullying by not tolerating bad behavior, by confronting bullying behavior when we see it, and by building a trusting relationship through our own behavior and by taking responsibility to exercise control in a situation. Wearing the purple symbol is fine, but it means nothing if you don’t modify your own behavior.

Symbols are powerful in their capacity to express a meaning. When displaying a symbol one must be sure of the meaning being expressed. Be conscious of the symbols you choose to display, but when you do choose to display them, display them proudly and live to the meaning – even if it’s just supporting your football team.

Doubt and the Boy

His First MLB Game at Fenway Park — We converted "standing room only" tickets into an evening in the Fenway Park press box for his very first major league game. An amazing evening for the two of us.

Doubt. Self doubt. It’s so hard to keep everything in order and prioritized – so hard to know if you’re doing the right thing or keeping the right things in focus. I am proud that I was able to find opportunity out of what could have been a loss of self and identity – to find personal and professional growth, and to have an opportunity of a lifetime to build a relationship with my son at a young time in his life.

I have a job I couldn’t love more, something that speaks to everything I’ve wanted my professional life to be. I wonder, though, if in pursuing professional excellence, I’m compromising what I have built with my son.

I was away for a couple of days last week. The night before I was leaving, he was anxious and couldn’t sleep. I left before he awoke the next morning, I came home after he was asleep and wasn’t awake when he went to school. I was gone for two days but it must’ve felt like all week to him. I picked him up at school that day and he gave me a huge hug. We spent the weekend hanging around – haircuts, video games, snuggled on the couch. But then there are the times he just “wants to be alone.” I’m exhausted from the traveling, and actually take a midday nap – from which he wakes me up, just wanting to play, but I’m just not up to it.

I’m conflicted because I have more time with him than I ever would with a more traditional job, but not as much as I used to have and sometimes, like this past week, I have big chunks of time when I’m not available to him. It makes me sad to be so happy with the direction of my professional life while experiencing this readjustment. He’s used to his Dad being a “stay at home” dad, a student and available to him all the time.

This summer will be my first on this new job, and it will be one of the busy times of the year. For two summers he and I had all that time for each other, and now it will likely be the polar opposite. I’m trying to figure out a way to include him in my scheduling plans – hoping to be able to take him to some places he may not have otherwise have seen, but to him it will not be the same summers he’s become used to. We both have had a gift, he just doesn’t know how much a gift it has been and I worry that I didn’t take full advantage of it or that I will lose what we had.

I’m writing this at 1 in the morning, because I can’t sleep…probably because I took that nap earlier, and as such the cycle will likely repeat itself – he’ll be up when I’m not and I’ll be grumpy when I do get up because I’m tired and then I’ll feel guilty about it. And then my week will start again with more time away. So, I’ll now go to bed, and when I get up I’ll make the conscious decision not to be grumpy. I hope I pull it off, because I don’t want to let this slip – it’s far too important.

“He’s not perfect.”

“He’s not perfect. You aren’t either, and the two of you will never be perfect. But if he can make you laugh at least once, causes you to think twice, and if he admits to being human and making mistakes, hold onto him and give him the most you can. He isn’t going to quote poetry, he’s not thinking about you every moment, but he will give you a part of him that he knows you could break. Don’t hurt him, don’t change him, and don’t expect for more than he can give. Don’t analyze. Smile when he makes you happy, yell when he makes you mad, and miss him when he’s not there. Love hard when there is love to be had. Because perfect guys don’t exist, but there’s always one guy that is perfect for you.”
― Bob Marley

“He’s not perfect. You aren’t either, and the two of you will never be perfect. But if he can make you laugh at least once, causes you to think twice, and if he admits to being human and making mistakes, hold onto him and give him the most you can. He isn’t going to quote poetry, he’s not thinking about you every moment, but he will give you a part of him that he knows you could break. Don’t hurt him, don’t change him, and don’t expect for more than he can give. Don’t analyze. Smile when he makes you happy, yell when he makes you mad, and miss him when he’s not there. Love hard when there is love to be had. Because perfect guys don’t exist, but there’s always one guy that is perfect for you.”
― Bob Marley

The Night Sky

This image of the “Pleiades Cluster”, or “Seven Sisters” as it is sometimes known, is one of the brightest open clusters to exist near our solar system, as well as one of the few clusters that can be seen with the naked eye.

Here’s what I appreciate about the night sky: On a clear night, there’s a clear picture. And here’s what it says about life to me.

From a distance, all these bodies are about the same size with only slight deviations – some are brighter, some are slightly more tinted in color, but they’re all about the same size to the human eye. It’s our proximity to these objects that skew our perception: from our vantage point the moon – a body 27% the size of our own planet – is roughly the same size as our sun, an object 100 times the diameter of our own planet. Jupiter, a planet 2.5 times larger than the rest of the planets, looks like a shiny dot in the sky, and about the same size as Mars. On a really clear night, you may be able to see one arm of the Milky Way galaxy across the sky…but only one arm.

We see the stars organized as patters in the sky – Orion, the Great Bear – but at the end of the day, their alignment in these shapes are created by our view from our place in the universe.

Our proximity, or lack there of, creates a bias and an inability to see magnitude in the big picture. We see patterns where none exist, we misjudge size. When we’re so deeply involved in a situation, we overestimate the importance; when we’re invested in a situation, we create patterns where they may or may not exist. When we look at the sky, we see millions of similar individuals in the sky when in reality they represent a diversity of size, color, depth, and magnitude. Our sun is the most important star in the sky, it heats our planet and makes life possible; in reality its a mid-range yellow star with no particular features. Its our dependence on this object that makes it important.

Yet, from a distance, we only see similarities. Only barely detectable to the eye are the differences between Red Giants and White Dwarfs. Betelgeuse has a detectable red hue to it if you’re paying attention. Sirius is the brightest star in the sky, but how many of us could pick it out? All those distinctions get lost in our distances.

How many times do we let distractions close to us cloud us from the larger picture – nearby lights or a cloudy, overcast sky that keeps us from seeing the stars at night? Not unlike our every day life.

I appreciate the night sky. It gives me a little perspective, perhaps because of the utter lack of proportion it shows us. You can look out over millions of years, millions of light-year distances and see only similarities in the aggregate with the odd-outlier standing out among the many. I don’t wonder about other life or about the vagueries of the universe, I’m far more simple than that. The night sky puts much of human interaction into perspective as a function of our lack of perspective in the night sky.

The “Average” US Population Density

I started doing a bit of a thought experiment – according to the Census Bureau, the US land area is 3,531,905.43 square miles and with a 2010 population of 308,745,538 there are 87.4 persons per square mile. There were 46,792,300 people living in the 50 most populous cities in the United States in 2010, or a little more than 15% of the population (15.15%).

Those 15% of the population live in just over 11,000 square miles (11,006 to be more or less exact) or 0.312% of the US land mass, for a population density of 4251.5 per square mile. Clearly, because these are the 50 largest cities, they do not represent “average.” So, I decided to remove those 46,792,300 people in their 11,006 square miles from the US population density to see how that changes things for those of us who do not live in the largest 50 cities.

If you do not live in one of the 50 largest cities, on average you live in a population density of 74.4 persons per square mile.

So then I increased the scope to the largest 100 cities. That covers 19.4% of the US population – 59,847,102 – and .488% of the land mass who live in a population density of 3470.75 per square mile.

I then brought the list to the top 275 most populous cities in the US, places with names such as Temecula, California (population just over 100,000) and a little place called Green Bay, Wisconsin (104,000). 27% of the US population lives in .76% of the landmass with a population density of 3127 per square mile. The other 73% of us living in 99.24% of the rest of the country live 64 to a square mile. But it’s much more complicated than that.

According to the National League of Cities, there were 19,492 municipal governments in the US in 2007. In 2007, 257 of them reached over 100,000, currently there are 275 so these numbers are somewhat out of date, but still point to the idea that the “Average” American does not live 87.4 per square mile. The question is though, how much of that landmass is actually inhabited at all.

In “Fooled by Randomness,” Nassim Taleb talks about this idea – that we’re easily fooled by statistics and that there are plenty of examples where 90% of a given population can be above average. His example: A village of 10 people – 9 of whom earn a salary of $30,000 and one desperately poor chap who earns $1000 yearly for an average yearly salary of $27,100.

There are 50 states and when their individual population densities are compared, 27 have an average population density greater than average. Consider this for a moment: New York State has the 7^th highest population density in the country – 412.3 persons per square mile. But the “average” New Yorker does not live in even that great a population density. Remove NYC’s 42% of the state’s population – remembering that because it’s the largest city in the country, by definition it is not average – and its 303 square miles, and what you’ve got a density of 239.26 per square mile.

And here’s something else to consider, the 23 states with lower than “average” population densities account for only 19.1% of the country’s population, meaning the 27 states with higher population densities are where 80.9% of the population live.

In 2003, the Census Bureau classified 94.6% of the country as rural open space. So, if we multiply the 3,531,905.43 square miles by the remaining 5.4% we come up with 1,907,228.93 square miles and a population density of 161.88. If we go back to the beginning of this post by subtracting the populations and landmasses of the 275 largest cities in the US, the average population density decreases to 119.34.

Now after having done this analysis over a few hours, I came across the Thoreau Institute’s website detailing much of my own exploration – http://ti.org/vaupdate36.html with an XLS download no less. Their agenda is different than mine – theirs is to explore the environment, mine was to explore numbers – but their data was helpful in that pursuit.

The real US population density would seem to be about twice what the official numbers show. But I’ve wiped out 94.6% where people “don’t live” from the landmass calculation, how come it only affected the population density by 100%? Because where people do live, we live in clusters, in areas where the land is largely developed. If you remove from consideration areas where few people live the actual density in which we live isn’t affected. If no one lived in those areas, the real density wouldn’t have changed, so clearly some people are living there. By removing cities with populations over 100,000 from the mix, the density number rises by about 36%.

The numbers are skewed and the “average” does not tell the true story of how close together we live.

The SS Norway

In April 2001, my new bride and I honeymooned aboard the SS Norway for a Western Caribbean cruise. It was an enormous hulk of a ship – the largest passenger ship in existence at the time, surpassed in 2004 by the HMS Queen Mary 2. As not only the largest, but also the oldest, It stood as a reminder of the not so distant transatlantic past of passenger vessels transporting passengers from Europe to New York and back over a period of weeks.

It served as a Caribbean cruiser – repurposed from its previous duties – among the specially built Carnival liners. Its refined nature contrasted against the newer and far more garish ships set it even further apart. Because it was built to withstand the pounding of the open Atlantic, it was a peculiar choice to cruise the shallower and more docile Caribbean sea. Its hull was far too deep to dock along the shorts in most ports of call, so tender boats were called to duty to transport its cruising passengers to shore. The trappings of the ship were clearly from another, more refined age with accents of real brass. The cabins had been retrofitted – the interior largely renovated – and therefore had sometimes peculiar shapes and sizes about them. Where there had once been a swimming pool in its life as the SS France, there was now a disco.

The existence of such a ship was a puzzlement. It first sailed in 1962, a bold statement of the Compagnie Generale Transatlantic to create what happened to be the last of the year-round transatlantic superships. When first conceived in 1956, it was to compete with Cunard and the United States Lines ships – and while built in competitive spirit, it was short sighted; As the ship was being built in the late 1950s, air travel began to overtake transatlantic shipping as the preferred means of intercontinental travel. It began life as a bit of a white elephant and sailed for a mere 12 years before being hulked in 1974 when oil prices soared and government subsidies for the running of the ship dried up.

It was then resurrected by the Norwegian Cruise Line in 1979 and rechristened, and renovated in 1980, into the SS Norway. By the time we took our honeymoon, NCL had been purchased by Star Cruises and plans had already begun to circulate about plans to bring the Norway to Malaysia for Pacific cruising. Even as the ship received facelifts, maintenance had been cut back and by the late 1990s it had experienced several incidents and breakdowns. By 2001, NCL had introduced “Freestyle Cruising” on all of its ships except for the Norway – her repurposing showing as the design would not support the open concept of the more modern ship.

We cruised on the Norway one more time in January 2003 – well after the point at which we understood would be her final cruising before being recommissioned in the Pacific. After having cruised on a Carnival vessel, we came to more fully appreciate the ship for what she had once been. A few months later in May, the ships boiler exploded in the port of Miami killing several crew members and injuring others. Upon hearing the news, we could not help but to wonder if any of those hurt or dead would’ve been someone who had served us a few months before.

While sad and shocking, it was not a surprise given the maintenance cut backs and other not-wholly dissimilar incidents in the past: in 1999 it was out of commission for three weeks after a fire in Barcelona. And so it was that the SS Norway came to its end on an Indian beach after having been towed there for demolition. It was a ship that seemed to be born just a little too late, never quite fitting in; but it was a beautiful ship, a destination in and of itself.

This is a video I put together from smaller clips I had of a ride on one of the tenders back to the Norway from Great Stirrup Cay during a rather unsettled weather pattern on that January 2003 cruise:

An Open Letter to My Daughter

You’re becoming your own woman and watching you grow up has been one of the greatest gifts of my life. You’re ever more the student than I was. You’re beautiful, bright, and your own person. I am very proud of the things you are and the things you are not.

You have situated yourself to be able to accomplish whatever you want to accomplish, and in a less than a year you will be start making the first decisions of your adult life and in a little more than a year you will accept what I hope is your first diploma. It seems not that long ago I brought you home from the hospital, that I visited your Kindergarten classroom, that I walked with you on your first communion and now you’re on the cusp of some of your first adult milestones.

I say I hope your high school diploma is but your first diploma. I want college for you, but I want for you to want that – and I think you do. I don’t want you to decide to go to college because I want it for you, I want you to make that decision because you want it. I want you to choose it because based on knowledge and belief, earning a college degree will provide you the best opportunity to follow your interests and passions. Simply earning a degree will not get you a job or a career you love, but it will best position you to do so.

I want you to choose a college and a course of study based on your interests and passions, not what is the most cost effective or what has the most cache, or what has the potential to earn you the most money long term. You have no idea what you want to do with the rest of your life, and it’s an unfair thing we do to young people asking them to know what they want to do with their lives. If you don’t know what you want to major in, that’s fine – there’s plenty of time for such things. You should know something about what you want, though. If not a course of study, then a location where you think you want to study, what you want to spend, or what you want to pursue in sport. Maybe that means taking time away from school and exploring the world. Something, anything. Without one anchor, you will have too many opportunities and choices to make. Allow yourself to make decisions that make the most sense, and the more anchors you can put down, the easier your decisions are to make.

You’re coming up to one of the most exciting and scary times of your life. I am here for you to give you as much guidance and love as you need – I will go to the ends of the earth to make sure you have the opportunities, but at the end of the day it will be your choice. Whatever you decide, it will be the first decision of your adult life. I am so proud of the young woman you have become and I love you.

What Are We Doing Here

I wonder sometimes about what we’re doing here. Not really in that eternal existential sort of way, but more in terms of what is real. How much of our wants, desires, needs are prepackaged and sold to us. Apple has become the largest company in the world, with the largest market capitalization by selling us things we didn’t know we “needed.” I remember when the first video iPod came out, my first reaction was, “who wants to watch a video on a 3” screen?” The same is true of camera phones, and indeed cell phones before that.

Our “needs” are analyzed, packaged and sold. We’re willing to pay more for something familiar, so we’ll spend $1.75 for a 2 liter bottle of Diet Coke over the $0.88 for a generic store brand. Car manufacturers don’t really manufacture anything – they assemble parts sourced from other companies stamped from their specs. They’re really engineering companies, or perhaps not even that given that a substantial amount of the engineering work is outsourced too.

We choose one box restaurant over another even though they sell the same food sourced from the same place. Want a McDonalds Chicken McNugget? It’s the same Tyson nugget you can buy at the supermarket. Tyson is just a marketing company selling variously sourced chickens. McDonalds is nothing more than a marketing company promoting franchised restaurants selling cooked, variously sourced food stuffs. We’re given food, made to taste more “real” with artificial flavors and processing.

You can go to Ikea in Connecticut and buy the same particle board television stand you can buy in Stockholm. Buy a Chevy in the United States that’s sold as a Holden in Australia. We come up with neologisms to elicit a feeling or to avoid negative connotations – “Infiniti” to elicit that sense of infinite possibilities or “glicee” to avoid the stigma of “computer generated print.”

We have made ourselves nothing more than small, economic units. Where we’re not used to earn money through acquiring products and services, we are used for the information we create which is then used for the purpose of selling us products and services. Despite the variously viral rumors Facebook will begin charging for use of the site, the fact is its not the use of their site that costs money – the use of the site MAKES money. The user is not the consumer, but is the product. The same with Google. Our relationships and interests have been monetized, in fact it is difficult to think of something that hasn’t been.

It just makes me wonder why we spend our lives earning money doing things we don’t like that we then spend on things we’re told we want at prices made higher by the cost of telling us that we want them. I criticize DisneyWorld and frankly most of Central Florida for being nothing but a facade and a fake, but in a way it’s honest – it doesn’t try to pretend its anything but fake. Which is more than what most of what we consume can say.

Randomness vs. Luck

Randomness. It’s the concept that allows for the possibility “000000” will come up in a random number generator, or that your older iPod would play the same song twice in a row (Apple has since modified the “shuffle” feature so it’s actually a little LESS random). It’s the 1 in 195,249,054 chance your PowerBall ticket will have all 5-numbers plus the powerball. In the entirety of baseball history, only one record has been set that couldn’t be predicted by randomness — Joe DiMaggio’s 56-game hitting streak, this according to Leonard Mlodinow in The Drunkards Walk.

In Talent is Overrated, by Geoff Colvin, it becomes clear that intelligence is not the major driving force behind success, and in Outliers Malcolm Gladwell makes clear that what makes an outlier is positioning oneself within one’s time to take advantage of opportunities. In retrospect, success appears guaranteed. In reality, it’s all in the positioning to best take advantage of opportunities — in essence to place yourself in position to be that 1 in 195,249,054, to make the most of your randomly chosen opportunity.

We cannot control randomness. We can position ourselves to take advantage of those random opportunities which present themselves to take us to where we want to go. I was a college undergraduate and an underclassman at that, struggling to put together a full time schedule when I enrolled in a 300-level course without having taken the prerequisite. On the first day of class, I arrived with my add/drop slip in hand, hoping that I could get signed into a course I had to take and get signed out of this course. From the first moments of that course, I was captivated by the professor and his enthusiasm for the course material. I not only put the add/drop slip away, I decided that I was going to take this course regardless of obstacles because it was interesting as hell, and thus set forth the direction of my undergraduate education, graduate education, and my career path.

My entire adult life was shaped by my scheduling this class in which I was presumably over my head, but by which I was completely captivated. But for my need to build a full time course load for the semester, I may still be wondering what I want to do with my life some 20-odd years later.

I was attending this school because I didn’t get into my first choice, and since I was paying my own way through school, I needed a state college. I applied to this school because my friend, whom I met because we both happened to be working in the same shopping mall while I was in high school, was going there.

Because I had done well in my undergraduate courses, and because I happened to stumble upon a recruitment brochure for a graduate program hanging in the psychology department offices, I applied to a school with which none of my professors was acquainted and was granted what was tantamount to a free ride. A completely random chain of events, and without any one of these myriad things happening, my life would certainly have been different.

There’s no good luck or bad luck. Things happen more or less on a predictable basis. Sooner or later, someone will buy that 1 in 195,249,054 lottery ticket. It’s not luck, it’s probability no matter how remote that event will happen, and the person to whom it happens is completely random. And guess what? The odds that it will happen to you specifically are even longer than that it will happen to someone in general.

Why do bad things happen to good people? Because they’re random events, and sooner or later it has to happen to someone. There’s only one way to weigh the odds more heavily in your favor and that is to best position yourself to take advantage of opportunities. You cannot be the 1 in 195,249,954 if you have not even bought a ticket.