“I was parked in a 2-hour parking zone for 4 hours and didn’t get a ticket! Today’s my lucky day. Maybe I should go buy a lotto ticket!” No. You didn’t get a parking ticket, because the meter maid didn’t go down that block, didn’t notice that you had been there so long, or was just feeling lazy. Not because you have ‘good luck’.
Luck (whether it be ‘good luck’ or ‘bad luck’) is simply not a real thing. Sometimes, you get a great job that you weren’t necessarily qualified for. Perhaps the person who interviewed you just really, really liked you and thought you were a great fit for the position, or maybe they were just desperate for someone to start right away. Sometimes, you get stuck in an elevator, get into a fender bender, get a speeding ticket, or catch the flu. Every once in awhile, you meet a person who ends up being a very important person in your life who you become very close to. It isn’t fate, and it isn’t luck. It is not karma, and it most certainly is not because you prayed about it. You might have caught the flu because you weren’t washing your hands often enough, or were around people who did not cover their mouths when they coughed. You got a speeding ticket because you were going over the speed limit and there happened to be a cop nearby who caught you. It’s not luck. Things just happen.
You think that person got in a car accident because they have bad luck, and that guy won the lottery because he has good luck? Sorry, but no. Things happen. Nothing is due to luck. ‘The Universe’ didn’t know who had the winning lottery ticket. ‘The Universe’ doesn’t even know what the lottery is, because it does not have a central nervous system, and it does not have thoughts. ‘The Universe’ doesn’t know anything about you and has no power over what goes on in your life. We have the power over what goes on in our lives to some extent, but there are many things that are completely out of our control. Our thoughts will not change that.
Having a good attitude and a positive outlook on things in life is a great thing if that helps you to be in a better mood and helps you to think more clearly, but it definitely does not ‘attract’ positive things, events, and occurances into your life. Oh, your positive mental attitude, good thoughts, and prayers cured your terminal illness and magically you’re well? No, dumbass. You had a good doctor and happen to live during a time where modern medicine is pretty advanced. Or maybe the disease went away on its own, but if that’s the case, it went away because THINGS JUST HAPPEN. I cannot stress this enough.
You donate money to that charity, give change to that homeless man outside of the grocery store every day, or helped an old woman carry her groceries, because you think it’s going to get you something good, in return, because of ‘karma’? You selfish fuckhead. It’s good to do nice things for other people, just because it helped them out or made them feel good. But guess what? karma isn’t real, and you don’t have good things coming your way because you did a good thing. That’s not to say you DON’T have good things coming your way at all- you might. But if you do, it’s because things just happen. Maybe some other idiot will do something nice for you in the future because he thinks it will give him good ‘karma’, or maybe he just wants to do something nice for you to help you out. Either way, he’s not helping you out because you helped someone out in the past. Even the worst people who have never done a nice thing in their life recieve acts of kindness from others. Good things happen. Bad things happen. Horrible, awful, unbelievable things happen, but not because of some bullshit that you call karma.
Some of you are probably thinking that I am just bitter because I tried ‘The Secret’ and didn’t get the results I wanted, or I prayed and the thing I wanted to happen didn’t happen. Wrong. I just simply do not need a crutch like that to help me get through the bad stuff. If you do need that crutch, much like you may need to believe in heaven because you are afraid of what happens when we die – that’s fine. There’s nothing wrong with that if you need it. Just stop trying to convince those of us who don’t.
Guess what? When you pray, no one is listening. Actually, it’s pretty egotistical for you to think that there is someone listening to you at every moment of the day and granting your wishes. I truly am happy that your sick mother’s cancer got better and she is well now and back to living her life, but you shouldn’t be thanking ‘God’ or ‘The Universe’ for that, you should be thanking her amazing doctors who worked their butts off, and advances in modern science and medicine. When that cancer was first diagnosed, maybe instead of being angry with ‘God’ or ‘The Universe’, you should be angry at what might have caused the cancer – such as decades of living a risky lifestyle. I’m aware that many cancers and countless other diseases were just a matter of bad genes, and in many cases, the victim did nothing wrong and there was not much, if anything, that they could have done to prevent it. However, in this day and age, we have a lot of knowledge and there are many things that we can do to prevent all kinds of health issues. Take advantage of that, but then realize that when we or someone we love gets a horrible disease, the only thing that is in our control is the treatment.
This does not only apply to negative events. When something positive happens in your life, take a little credit. Your book got published because you wrote well, edited a ton, worked hard, networked, hired the right agent for the job, etc. Not because you prayed and used ‘The Law of Attraction’. You lost 100 lbs and got your health in check because you decided you wanted to, and set several hours aside each week to work out. You were conscious about what you ate, and it paid off. You did not lose weight because you prayed to ‘God’ and he granted your wish.
So, the next time anything happens to you, I challenge you to take some responsibility. Even if the bad thing that happened to you could not have been prevented (although in most cases you will find that there was probably something you could have done, albeit small) – take responsibility in turning the situation around, or trying to prevent the bad thing from happening in the future. Take responsibility when something finally does go the way you wanted it to. Wake up, and stop thinking that someone or something out there is controlling the events in your life – It’s not. Sometimes, things just happen.