Today is St. Patrick’s Day … a day of luck and revelry; a day when we tend to wish for more of the former, and often engage in an excess of the latter. Fair enough … I too have yearned for more good fortune in my life … I too have engaged in some full-tilt celebrations.

And yet, maybe today is also a good day to re-examine just what it means to be “lucky”, and just what it means to truly “celebrate life” …

First, a look at LUCK:

“Any fool can have bad luck; the art consists in knowing how to exploit it.” ~ Frank Wedekind

Good times are going to find us — no doubt about it. And it is a great thing to revel in them; to honor their arrival with deep laughter, Soul-piercing gratitude, & even some joyfully raucous rambunctiousness.

AND YET “bad times” are going to find us as well. We are going to be in pain … We are going to be ill &/or injured … We are going to lose loved ones … We are going to have our regular bouts with sadness, anger, fear & frustration. Such struggles come to every human being; they are part of what this amazing journey of being conscious is all about. No matter how hard we strive or pray or hope, difficult times are going to come to us — and they are going to keep on coming.

Traditionally, these painful periods are judged as “unfortunate”, and we have been taught to either “wait them out” until they pass or engage in various practices that will bring back the “happy times”. You can visit any local bookstore to find hundreds, if not thousands, of “self-help” books dedicated to helping us to identify & destroy the sources of such “bad luck”.

Well, there is another way to look at things — there is another way to CELEBRATE life. I won’t call it a “better” way, but it is available to you, and I think it is at least worth a try or two.

And this other way involves our innate gift of choice — the power we all have to choose how we view difficult situations, as well as to choose how we to respond to them. In this way, when pain arrives in our lives, instead of striving to remove it or fix it; instead of hopelessly waiting for it to pass and for life to “get better”, we can USE THE PAIN to empower our lives — to make every act of Kindness a life-changing event.

And how do we do so, you might ask? It’s pretty simple really — whenever you “feel bad”; whenever you encounter some “bad luck” in your life, do something Kind for another.

When your are ill or injured, give someone a smile.
When you are tired, utter a few Kind words to a friend.
When you are angry, forgive an enemy from your past.
When you are scared, do an anonymous good deed.
When you are sad, be compassionate to those suffering similarly.

Ironically, when you have the courage to do so, not only do these simple actions become immensely Power-full for others, they also neutralize your own suffering. Indeed, such “irrational” acts of Kindness are so potent that they actually heal the body and mind — bringing wellness to the unwhole, energy to the fatigued, inner Peace to the angry, courage to the frightened, and Joy to the depressed.

When we have the courage to make such “radical” choices — when we choose to be Kind to others when we are least inclined to do so — our tragedies turn into blessings.

In this way, where others see misfortune, we see opportunity …
In this way, we reclaim the Power over our own existence …
In this way, we make our own luck.

And THIS is how we can truly CELEBRATE the amazing gift that is our conscious life.

With that said, I wish you all lots & lots of LUCK today!

“A lot of what we ascribe to luck is not luck at all. It’s seizing the day … It’s seeing what other people don’t see and pursuing that vision.” ~ Howard Schultz

LOVE is a verb …

… got LOVE?

Filed under: Wisdoms from the Journey by Scaughdt