On Saturday, we were going to go to the airport from our house in Istanbul, in the morning, but we were going to stop at a shopping mall to get a cup of coffee on our way. So, we left the house an hour earlier than usual, we scrambled into the car, loaded our baggage, closed the doors, all ready to go...and the car wouldn't start.
So, we tried to jump-start the car with our cables and it didn't work. Then we tried it with another set of cables and voila! The car started running again!
So, we got on the road, speculating on why the car might have done that. We passed the mall, because it didn't have an entrance from the highway. We started looking for its entrance and we got lost in the middle of a settlement on the outskirts of Istanbul, near the road to the airport. After going around the place hopelessly looking for an entrance, we decided to skip the coffee at the mall and to just get it from the airport. We got to the Domestic Departures gate and the car STOPPED. Right there, after we were where we needed to be, even though we were and hour early.
So, were we lucky that the car didn't stop in the middle of the highway? Or was it bad luck just to have the battery of the car run out the morning we were supposed to leave?
The things is, with luck, you can't draw lines and say "this happened because of this". I don't even know if there is a thing such as "luck", after all, the battery of the car was last changed 2 years ago and it was bound to die someday, and apparently there was just enough "juice" in it to get us to the airport after a detour in an unknown little town.
In the Turkish system of lottery, the probability of anyone getting the big prize is 1 in 10000000. So, how do they get it? What makes them pick the winning ticket next to lots of tickets? Or, how does a person pick the ticket right next to the winning ticket?
Some people always seem to have good things happen to them. Why is that? Again, there sure is a scientific explanation for it, but, still, couldn't there be some other factor affecting our decisions, like luck? If you don't know the answer to a question in a multiple choice test, for example the Turkish University Entrance Test, you just guess: yes, the probability of you getting it correct is 20 %, but what affects which choice you circle?
So, maybe the battery running out was bad luck and us getting stuck at the airport is still bad luck, or maybe it is good luck, because we got stuck somewhere safe, or maybe it wasn't luck at all. Maybe, when you picked out your lottery ticket yesterday, you were lucky and you picked the one with all the winning numbers "randomly", or it fluttered in the wind and that's why you chose it. Maybe, when you "randomly" guessed the answer to that question and got it right, got lucky, with which the in the Turkish system you could pass hundreds of people, you were just looking at the choices and unconsciously picking the one that was divisible by 3, because the number given in the question was 30. But it is always nice to believe that you alone are not in control of your decisions, that a rabbit's foot around your neck will help you win at poker, that a four leaved clover in your pencil case will help you pass the test, that seeing a double rainbow will help you meet the love of your life, but don't forget; with the rabbit's foot around your neck and the clover in your pencil case, you tend to do better and work harder because you know you'll win or be the best. Just saying.
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