Are we really Unlucky or is it our Perspective?

Something that occurred to me today. We often feel unlucky when bad things happen, because we KNOW ABOUT IT! What about when we luckily miss a bad situation but didn’t know it even existed? We wouldn’t feel lucky because we didn’t know about it.

For those of us who has met with a misfortune in any way, such as when we come across a rude person, when we meet a scammer, when we get fired, or the mere fact that we have to work and sleep to live. We may be upset about how unfair life is, try to deny it and wish it never happened. This is when our thoughts may be: “Why did this have to happen? I wish we could just live our lives without this…”

Even I’ve done it, and I’m sure that this is something we all do.

Have you ever thought that there may be countless bad things you DID miss by luck, but you don’t actually see it as “lucky” because you didn’t know it existed?

For Example:

Many of us, including myself, hate the fact that we need to sleep to survive, and we think: “Why can’t we be born without needing sleep?” Because wouldn’t life be so much better if we just didn’t even need to sleep? We’d have twice more time. Well, think about it this way: Have we ever thought, what if we had to hibernate all winter, in addition to all that we’re sleeping now. Wouldn’t that make us lose more time? We should be grateful for the fact that we don’t even need to do more to lose time. The reason why many of us may not have thought of that is we may not have thought of that, as it didn’t exist.

Another example is say if you read a very nasty comment and think to yourself: I wish I never saw that. Why couldn’t I have not come across this page? Have you thought that you may have luckily missed out on 10 other nasty comments like that, but you didn’t know about it?

The sad thing is, when we do get lucky and avoid bad situations, we often don’t know so we can’t actually feel lucky, unless we actively think about what could’ve been. This is why the quote, “you have to experience the bad to appreciate the good” makes sense, as well as “only when there’s a villain, do you appreciate the hero.” When there’s no comparison, nothing worse off, we just think it’s normal. In a story, would we truly appreciate heroes, if villains didn’t exist?

Changing our Ways of Thinking

I feel that this works for me whenever I’m feeling bad about something happening, such as I feel unfair that this happened. I think about the fact that there could’ve been a much worse situation that may have happened to me, it’s just that because I missed it, I have no idea it existed. Like this very moment, I could be missing out on bumping into the rudest person ever! I think if we all think more about what could potentially happen, we’d feel luckier!