Does luck really exist in life?

This archived article was written by: Kelshaw Alexander Jr.

In life, we need a stroke of luck or two to get us through, whether you believe it or not. I think it exists because I’ve had a few moments in my life where I could have been seriously injured or died if it were not for being “lucky.” Yes! I also had one or two unlucky moments and when I look back in retrospect, I appreciate both the lucky and unlucky times. If I choose one that I appreciated the most, it would be luck, not because having luck is almost always a good thing, but because the times that I did get lucky were life threatening instances that mysteriously got away from me.
Ten years ago, I started to believe in being lucky and unlucky, and it took one tragedy for that to happen. It was New Year’s Day and although everyone was in high spirits, my friends and I were bored and wanted something to do or somewhere to go, so we began brainstorming. Suddenly, one of my friends said, “let’s go get KFC.” For most Americans, this would their fourth or fifth choice of fast food restaurants, but for us, it’s our first and second choice. We immediately agreed to go there and this was the single most important box of KFC I ever consumed because inadvertently that box of KFC saved my life.
Approximately 45 minutes later, we were walking back to the neighborhood when we heard several loud explosions. At the time, we didn’t think much of it. The reason for that was because the day before we were all bursting fireworks ourselves so we originally thought that some of our friends were doing the same. To our surprise it was not fireworks, in fact it was the last thing on our mind, gunshots. When we got to our neighborhood, the crime scene was at the same spot my friends and I were previously hanging out. At that moment, I realized I was extremely lucky to be alive, along with my friends. Up to this day I ask myself what made me
leave from hanging out there to go for KFC when I wasn’t so hungry, but just wanted to go for the walk.
A time where I was unlucky was when I fractured my right tibia. It happened the same year (2008) as the shooting, but in took place in April. That just goes to show that good and bad events can happen, but once the good outweighs the bad, we should be fine. I was 12 years old at the time, therefore, I was paranoid about the injury because I thought I couldn’t play soccer anymore and it was the end for me. If you ask me I was overly dramatic, I would always ask my parents, “why did this had to happen to me.” As I got older, I understood that life isn’t always going to be fair, we will have set backs and that’s what I took it as. The other thing I did was weighed the good (luck) and the bad (unlucky) thing that happened to me that year and realized how blessed I was. I immediately began counting my blessings rather than being ungrateful.
Whether it’s good or bad, we must appreciate the good and accept the bad as something you can learn from. From the bad times, I learned that even though I am going through tough times, there is someone else going through worse than me. It allowed me to appreciate the good times even more. The good times made me realized how blessed I was even more, because as I said before, those moments were life threatening.
Do you believe being lucky and unlucky exist? Did anything happened throughout your life where you thought you were either lucky or unlucky or is it just me that feels this way?