Those who have spoken to me or read this blog this year have been no stranger to the fact that it wasn't the best time of my life. Just like every Millenial I hit the quarter-life crisis this year with force, trying to figure out what my life was after I had abandoned my life plans to seek fulfilment. Most people are aware of the sad realities that come with post-grad life, for example perpetual application writing and despair. I, however, always relied on the fact that all I needed was one lucky break, and I was convinced I would just get lucky early on and not have to deal with these problems. Luck throughout my life had been decent and I doubted it would end once I really need some luck. Needless to say, relying on that was a pretty bad idea since it didn't work out at all. In the end I was genuinely concerned I had been cursed because my bad luck kept piling up in every aspect of my life. Now I have found a way to look at luck, and it's best described by looking at some scales...
Everybody is familiar with the ideas of Karma: if you do good things, good things will get back to you. Karma is a big, huge lie! I am not talking about myself in particular but I have witnessed an insane amount of people being miserable or happy because Karma had not given them what they deserve. Luck, however, is a real thing. Some people just have more of it than others. Luck to me means getting something you don't necessarily deserve. I came to realize I'm really not that lucky because I was hardly given something without working for it. Nevertheless, I consider it luck I was given the chance to acquire the things I received even if I had to work hard for them. I know many people who are way worse people than me though that were given the same things and more without a single ounce of effort. All they did was get lucky! At the same time, I know even more people who are nothing but wonderful and were given ridiculous hardships. Hardly fair! So Karma doesn't exist, but luck does.
As I was listening to a 44-year old Australian woman this week telling me what happened to her in life to make her end up here in Cairo, I realized that luck comes in shape of a balance. This woman was abandoned by her husband, torn away from her family and betrayed by her friends, prompting here to seek a new start in Cairo. For many months nothing good had happened to her. When she thought things couldn't get worse, her phone was stolen. The only thing I felt compelled to tell this extraordinary woman who had the courage to say "Fuck you luck, I will make my own luck!" and leave everything she knew behind was that her luck will change. Seriously good things are about to happen to her because luck is a scale, and it's severely shifted in a negative direction. To restore the balance luck will send some serious goodies. And I know that because I recently experienced it.
One could argue that coming to Cairo could not have been easier for me. I already had existing friendships and relationships so never really had to do the "starting over" thing. I was merely returning to a life I had already started on a microscopically small scale. From basically day one I had a male companion which makes life for a blonde chick in Cairo a tremendous amount easier. Of course there were challenges but I was spared so many of them because I had my sister, her friends and all of the people I knew here around me. After months of not finding any job I was suddenly also offered jobs I never thought I could get and accepted one of them just last week. You could definitely say that I was damn lucky this time. In the short space of two months I have now transformed from a bored, lonely jobless person to a busy career-chaser with too much to do to see her boyfriend. I had accumulated too much bad luck to justify having more of it, so my luck was bound to change. The scale had shifted too far, and now I'm ready for all the bad luck be returned on good luck...
Everybody is familiar with the ideas of Karma: if you do good things, good things will get back to you. Karma is a big, huge lie! I am not talking about myself in particular but I have witnessed an insane amount of people being miserable or happy because Karma had not given them what they deserve. Luck, however, is a real thing. Some people just have more of it than others. Luck to me means getting something you don't necessarily deserve. I came to realize I'm really not that lucky because I was hardly given something without working for it. Nevertheless, I consider it luck I was given the chance to acquire the things I received even if I had to work hard for them. I know many people who are way worse people than me though that were given the same things and more without a single ounce of effort. All they did was get lucky! At the same time, I know even more people who are nothing but wonderful and were given ridiculous hardships. Hardly fair! So Karma doesn't exist, but luck does.
As I was listening to a 44-year old Australian woman this week telling me what happened to her in life to make her end up here in Cairo, I realized that luck comes in shape of a balance. This woman was abandoned by her husband, torn away from her family and betrayed by her friends, prompting here to seek a new start in Cairo. For many months nothing good had happened to her. When she thought things couldn't get worse, her phone was stolen. The only thing I felt compelled to tell this extraordinary woman who had the courage to say "Fuck you luck, I will make my own luck!" and leave everything she knew behind was that her luck will change. Seriously good things are about to happen to her because luck is a scale, and it's severely shifted in a negative direction. To restore the balance luck will send some serious goodies. And I know that because I recently experienced it.
One could argue that coming to Cairo could not have been easier for me. I already had existing friendships and relationships so never really had to do the "starting over" thing. I was merely returning to a life I had already started on a microscopically small scale. From basically day one I had a male companion which makes life for a blonde chick in Cairo a tremendous amount easier. Of course there were challenges but I was spared so many of them because I had my sister, her friends and all of the people I knew here around me. After months of not finding any job I was suddenly also offered jobs I never thought I could get and accepted one of them just last week. You could definitely say that I was damn lucky this time. In the short space of two months I have now transformed from a bored, lonely jobless person to a busy career-chaser with too much to do to see her boyfriend. I had accumulated too much bad luck to justify having more of it, so my luck was bound to change. The scale had shifted too far, and now I'm ready for all the bad luck be returned on good luck...
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