Luck & Angelic Messengers

Written July 10th, 2008. Worth republishing for the conversations among readers. See the Comments section, below

It rained continually yesterday, didn’t stop but went through varying intensities. It reached the point that everyone ignored the light drizzle. Before the day was over I was taking no notice of the moderate rain either. I was fixing the car standing in a puddle, using the bonnet (hood) as a shelter. There was nothing vital about the work, but I wanted to get it finished: to install the new gadget which would send the correct temperature reading to the gauge on the dashboard. The job was trivial, could have done it in a few minutes with the right socket spanners, but there’s the rub. The young man next door had lent me his set but the exact right size was missing and I may have crossed a thread in consequence. The sockets are expensive when you buy them individually, and I do my best to make the right decision overall and in each case. As in life. (Till a year ago, this blog was titled, “As in Life . . .”)

So how does one learn? I was talking yesterday about the impossibility of self-help books. They exist of course, but how can they work? A “Do-it-yourself Guide to Car Maintenance” would be quite handy in theory, but would it make you an expert? Would it give you help in every dilemma? No, we have to build up our own internal library of experience, made up of images and schemas, not words. In life, one learns best by working alongside someone wiser. There’s an expression “monkey see, monkey do”. We are indeed monkeys. When I worked in a bank on contract for a couple of years, I learned another apparently common expression for informal training: “sitting with Betty”. No matter who Betty was, it was bound to beat “sitting through PowerPoint”.

Still, one learns something from books. From my teens onwards I haunted junk-shops which sold mainly old furniture but had a few books too. They were cheaper than the antiquarian bookshops. There I found In Tune with the Infinite by Ralph Waldo Trine, who seems to have been the Daddy of self-help; though I also obtained the Great-grandfather of the genre: Self Help by Samuel Smiles. This was more like a set of potted biographies, each demonstrating the magical power of hard work, honesty and single-mindedness in bringing a person from impoverished or unpromising roots to fame and fortune.

The best “popular philosophy” guide I’ve ever come across is In Defence of Sensuality by John Cowper Powys, published 1930. It never seems to have been truly popular, being long out of print and having spawned no imitations. He advocates the cultivation of our “ichthyosaurus ego”, a way to rapture for the lonely self, but the very opposite of Buddhist detachment. He encourages his reader to curse at the source of all cruelty, the First Cause: but to give generously to beggars.

Nowadays, there is little originality: people teach what they think they know, thinking they know how to teach. A bizarre memory from twelve years ago: the doorbell rings. It’s a man peddling his own book on how to get rich quick. It turns out that his personal get-rich-quick plan, after having been made redundant from some desk job, is to sell his book. It shocks me that he lives a few streets away, and that we resemble one another: similar age and social background. Did it really happen, or did I imagine it? Either way, he was an “angelic messenger”: a human being sent by the gods of chance to show me something, as in a mirror. As a warning.

This blog is all “I”, “me” because it’s devoted to truth. Anything else but “I”, “me” is hearsay or guesswork. In any case, I have a theory that the personal is the universal. Adopt the ideas of the crowd, and you’ll dwell in a world which has never really existed except in the clichés of song lyrics and journalism. Go your own way, think your own thoughts; and when you express them you may touch another soul; because all our sensibilities are built on the same dark (unacknowledged) foundations.

Suppose I ignored that messenger-angel and decided to write a self-help book myself? Well, perhaps not a book, but a blog post or two? Not “get rich quick” for that has hardly touched me even in fantasy, but “how to live”.

In honesty, I would have to say “Be lucky”. That is lesson 1. All other lessons, if any, will be amplifications of lesson 1, which has to be thought about first.

PS: looking for a suitable illustration for this piece, I googled “lucky”. This article came up first. How lucky is that?

27 thoughts on “Luck & angelic messengers”
Wayfarer Scientista
hello there! I finally have have a stable enough internet connection to come visit and thank you for your comments on my bird-friendly post! Nice to meet you – I’ll be back.
goatman
Its always the missing socket that you need.Why do the metric-sized sockets’ set always skip every other number?Tis a baffler.
Davo
Strange tools, spanners. When i was growing up in the world of measurement, the language was all in “thou” (of an inch). Then we “embraced” a “universal” measurement of tenths. Go figure.
Davo
Certainly buggered up some literary imagery .. can you really imagine the hero or heroine “millimetering their way toward freedom”?
rob
The lucky are usually also plucky.
Vincent
Wayfarer scientista, thanks for your visit. Which of your posts did I comment on? I couldn’t find it again.
Goatman, yes indeed. I should buy a socket set myself but am using neighbours’ at present. So many baffling things in the Universe,
I love it. Davo, it is a long time since I heard of a thou. Did you ever use a slide rule? You don’t see them these days, either, or hear about logarithms. Oh well. I suppose one should not grieve over their passing.
Vincent
So Rob, to find luck one should use pluck, and pluck the winning balls from life’s lottery, each day. As you seem to have done lately.
ghetufool
you are obsessed with self help books. in fact, in the process of criticising them, you are glorifying them. ‘you can love them or hate them,but you cannot ignore them’ sort of. btw, i am amazed with your talent. the same hand that can hold the spanner and fix things can hold a pen and do magic. great vincent.
Vincent
Glorifying self-help books: yes they fascinate me in a rather negative way. It might be a good idea to ignore them I suppose.
V
The Dutch word for happiness is “geluk”. Which also means luck. Gelukkig means happy.Gelukt means “it is made or done”. It was possible.
Jim
A quick comment, after reading the reference from the poor Gage situation, but allied to this post even as my memory plays among the latest three.You Vincent, ARE a primer, essence is in the action, not in the thing, but Vincent, that does not mean physical action, as in body separate from mind, but in words that clothe the body. And ‘luck’ to me is simply recognizing future, the ‘spirit’ of one prevents one from any other recognition or focus.How is there drought, as in Joseph? How is there faith, as in Abraham? How is there Jacob, but by the radiance of our senses from our souls which encompass our bodies resulting in our realities, (btw, that is the explanation of the 12 tribes, and that is the definition of human reality shrouded in mystery that is simply (at present), esoteric.This doesn’t change, this description, be the pov this or that religion or spiritual persuasion or the lack of something of such name, reality doesn’t bow to any apart from all.Luck is, therefore, and luck is as spiritual as Jungs synchronicity whcih is accepted by all in there own clothing.I guess, we just have to strip them all naked to see what we have and where we stand.LOL, Vincent, forgive me, Quick is not always fast.
Scot
pretty lucky–no I’d say it was designed. If you had titled it spammers or self-help books instead of lucky–it would not have come up. So it is what you make it–don’t you think?
Hayden
this reminds me how differently people learn and even think. My mind is typically absent images, and heaven forbid a schematic showed up – my right brain would have a seizure! Perhaps this is why I belabor my efforts to visualize my new shelter – because its difficult for me to see space relationally. I devour “how to” books – and often enough their words show up in my brain to guide me when I’m confronted with something that challenges me. Playing Ms. fix-it is devilishly difficult for me; I persist because I think it’s good to force my brain to the exercise and because I’m stubborn. Probably more the later, glossed with the former, LOL!
Vincent
Siegfried thanks for the information re geluk. It gives me a lot to think about. In English we have older uses of “happy” which are closer to “luck”. “Happy coincidences” for example. We also have the word “haply” which means “by chance” or “by accident”. (as well as mishap, happening referring to chance .) I am no philologist but the word luck is not so deeply embedded in the English language. Indeed, the dictionary tells me this: [Origin: 1400–50; late ME luk < MD luc, aphetic form of gelucke; c. G. Glück] Whereas hap is older in English: [Origin: 1150–1200; ME < ON happ luck, chance; akin to OE gehæp fit, convenient; prob. akin to OCS kobŭ auspice, OIr cob victory] and happy is derived from hap: [Origin: 1300–50; ME; see hap1, -y1]
Vincent
Thanks for this Jim. I think you have aligned luck with prophecy, as I should have done if looking at the matter more comprehensively.Vincent
Vincent
No, you are right Scot, and it’s true that much of what we consider luck can be accounted for quite rationally. I’m as guilty as anyone in seizing on things as evidence of something uncanny.
Vincent
Hayden, I am sure you are right, and that brains are wired differently. You refer to “right-brain”. I can never remember which is supposed to be which and on reading Descartes’ Error by Antonio Damasio, which is full of analysis as to which parts of the brain are responsible for what, hemisphere lateralization is rarely referred to. So I checked up on Wikipedia and it confirms the impression I had that “left-brain/right brain” has become a metaphoric distinction in popular parlance, enabling people to distinguish the language/analytic mode from the image/intuition/holistic mode. Clearly we may have a preference for one or the other based on our perceived competence.I do think you are right that we can force our brain to learn new pathways (another metaphoric use), even in middle age and beyond.I’ve often thought in recent months that I prefer engineering to writing; but I like to construct sentences as though they are intricate little mechanisms which mesh into other sentences which mesh into paragraphs and so on. Which may be an instance of using one part of the brain for a purpose other than what it was designed for!
Hayden
“I like to construct sentences as though they are intricate little mechanisms which mesh into other sentences which mesh into paragraphs and so on.”amazing! I would never think to use writing/language that way! I tend to follow an intuitive flow or rhythm..
BBC
It finely stopped raining here and I’m thankful for that, I was getting so tired of it.
paul maurice martin
Absolutely – about luck. Sellers of self help books often grossly downplay or entirely overlook that one, the idea being, “if you buy my book, your success is guaranteed.”B.s….In the US, downplaying luck is part of the myth that we’re running a meritocracy over here.And I think that for many people, the idea that so long as they (fill in the blank – work hard, stay true to their convictions, do yoga and eat right…) then nothing really bad can happen to them is a way of alleviating anxiety.
Vincent
Hayden, I am not so different from you in following an intuitive flow or rhythm in the construction of sentences. My observation properly belongs to the editing. For example if I want to add a sentence between two others, it may upset the interlocking of subjects, objects and the referencing of pronouns. So to get that sentence in, a lot of tweaking is required.Such work is so detailed that it would be impossible to write a piece of any length using “engineering principles” consciously. They still operate but at an unconscious level, just as we move our fingers when doing skilled but well-practised operations.
Vincent
but BBC aren’t you glad to be affected by the weather? I look back incredulously at the years I spent in warm well-lit offices, especially when I used to travel to London by warm well-lit train and Tube, hardly touched by the benign or angry moods of nature. better to have to battle the seasons.
Vincent
Paul, it’s funny how I was writing about self-help books in the last couple of posts, while your wonderful book, which can certainly be classed in the self-help genre, was on its way to me in the mail. I want to write about it now, indeed got up at 4.30 am with that purpose though I’ve only reached page 30. I was expecting to argue with it, find fault. But dazzled with its quality—both content and style. One thing had lowered my expectations—the subtitle. An editor/publisher who cared enough would never have allowed you to get away with that. I hope your first edition sells out quickly so that you can replace the existing subtitle. How about this? Original Faith: How to be Taught by Love? The existing subtitle (“Finding the Interfaith Soul of Progressive Religion and Spirituality”) reflects a putative reader’s start point, but is likely to deter readers coming from any other start point, as it did in fact deter me.
Gabor Csepregi
There is a book that has been greatly influenced by Powys’ In Defence of Sensuality: The Philosophy of Wine by the Hungarian Béla Hamvas.
Vincent
Gabor, I am delighted to be corrected by you on this point. I should have known or remembered about Bela Hamvas, because Jacqueline Peltier has written about him several times in her Lettre Powysienne, a journal to which I have made several contributions (under the name of Ian Mulder). Has Philosophy of Wine been translated into English?
Gabor Csepregi
There is an English translation of Hamvas’  The Philosophy of Wine. It has been published by Editio M, Szentendre, Hungary, in 2003. Actually I did the translation myself.