Why do bad things happen to you? Schleprock Sam was a character on The Flintstone’s cartoon. He was always followed by a dark raining cloud. And known for having and being bad luck. That is luck defined as “success or failure brought by chance rather than one’s own actions.”
This belief about luck means Schleprock can never change his circumstances. He was born jinxed as well as a jinx. Like in the movie “The Bad “ eight-year-old Rhoda Penmark was born a sociopathic homicidal maniac because her biological mother was. And like unfortunate Schleprock birth was her bad luck as was she to those who crossed her.
Have you ever felt that you were born under a cloud or destined through DNA to be a failure? An addict? An Outcast? Unlucky? If so, many people have and do feel the same way too. Mostly because understanding awful and tragic events in life against one's best and most noble effort is almost if not impossible.
Rabbi Harold Kushner wrote the book “ When Bad Things Happen to Good People “ after losing his son to a premature aging disease. He found a faith to help him through it with a new assessment of his God. The rabbi concluded that his God was not all-powerful after all. But his God was still good he decided.
This makes it certainly sound like we are all destined for bad things no matter how good we are. Like the comedian Bert Williams we will have those “if it wasn’t for bad luck I wouldn’t have no luck at all”, “if it was raining soup I would be found with a fork and no spoon in sight “ days. And too determine an impotent God to blame.
We may try like others to counteract our luck with Talisman of some kind: a four leaf clover, a wishbone or maybe a rabbit’s foot. “Depend on the rabbit’s foot if you will but remember it didn’t work for the rabbit quipped humorist R. E. Shay. These exterior physical amulets hoped to change invisible realities causing natural tangible events is a bit backward to my thinking.
Events do fuel believes but beliefs can also fuel events. Faith I mean. Complete trust or confidence in the greatest power in the universe. Love trumps luck in my book. Because I know that there is no such thing as a good person or people. Not completely anyway.
When we are honest with ourselves we know through thoughts, words and deeds we perform bad acts thus initiating Karma or reciprocity in degrees. But love… unconditional love allows us to accept ourselves as we are and believe the best for us and those we love. Through great and devastating loss looking through the eyes of faith we may not understand but we accept the unknowable as part and parcel to one known: we are because of love.
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