Lucky break, tough luck... Six tips for learning to live with chance

Lucky break, tough luck… Six tips for learning to live with chance

Randomness is our enemy. We don’t accept what happens to us without trying to find out why, and we lionize the relationship between cause and effect. And yet, in our complicated, unsettled and incredibly interconnected world, we need to try out a different approach so we can avoid being excessively rigid when up against the unimaginable.

I-Don’t let yourself be hoodwinked by the illusion of individualism

Dive into a book on personal development or watch a TED talk, and you’ll feel much better: the keys to your destiny are in your own hands. All you have to do is get your decisions right – alter your habits, learn how to be grateful, kick laziness into touch – and your horizons will open up like the sky in springtime! You’re the solution you’ve been looking for. Okay, you’re well aware that this fine machine sometimes suffers a glitch or two, but that’s just an aberration. All in all, your life course is under your control… Um, are you sure?

The reality is a world away from what you think: like all living systems, you’re tangled up in a web of myriad existences that interact with each other without even knowing. Someone else’s tiniest actions – those of a total stranger, let’s say, on the other side of the world or somebody who has long gone – can change the course of your life forever.

Henry Stimson was US Secretary of State for War in 1945. All it took for Stimson to divert the atomic bomb intended for Kyoto to Hiroshima was… the memory of a happy holiday.

In complete contrast, even your most minuscule choices may have a huge impact on the lives of others, though you might never know. You could be the butterfly whose flapping wings will unleash a tornado somewhere in the world.

What should you do with this information? First and foremost, don’t let the feeling that you’re responsible for everything crush you. And don’t try to be in control the whole time. Instead, become aware of your role as an active player in the great orchestra of the world, the one-of-a-kind product of a history that stretches back 13.7 billion years.
#You’re not alone

Published by Dominique Fidel

After completing her studies in civilizations and working 10 years in corporate communications, Dominique now divides her time between popularizing science, institutional communications, literary reviews, and Business Digest. 

Lucky break, tough luck… Six tips for learning to live with chance

I-Don’t let yourself be hoodwinked by the illusion of individualism

Are you ready to question yourself? ?