Lady Luck and Destiny

“I'm a greater believer in luck, and I find the harder I work the more I have of it.”

― Thomas Jefferson

Our planet earth is teeming with life. In this vast universe full of billions of galaxies, stars and planets, ours is the only world where we can say with certainty that life exists. Being such a lonely creature with the ability to ask big questions, we have often pondered - Was earth destined to host life? More anthropocentrically, Were humans destined to arise in the course of Evolution?

These questions are reflections of our innate desire of searching for meanings, purposes. But the answer, rather unpoetically, seems to be - No. Earth had the necessary ingredients to cook up Life, but it was not Destiny that led it to become the home for humans, rather a set of biochemical 'accidents'. Destiny is something that is bound to happen - a predetermined outcome. But Life was not predetermined. There was a forecast of life emerging given the initial conditions of Earth but not with a hundred percent certainty. Life was one of the outcomes, maybe the most obvious and likely one, among many possibilities.

The events of the universe, our earth and even our lives are riddled with such immense possibilities. There is no such thing that will definitely happen and nothing that can never happen. You step out of your house and a meteorite crashes upon your head, what is the probability of that? Very slim, but never zero. So our lives, whether we are living in a Matrix or not, in a sense are simulations.

Consider the computer simulations. The human 'creators' or 'designers' define a set of rules, sets some initial conditions and let the massive computing powers of the machines take its course. The creators here do not micromanage each and every step, or determine the exact path from the beginning to the end. The output is then not predetermined, but can be speculated beforehand based on past experiences. Because of the uncertainty associated with these simulations, the results can often surprise its creators. Run the same simulation a thousand times and the exact desired outcome may still not be obtained in the thousandth run.

This is however only true for non-deterministic simulations. Our lives indeed follow such non-deterministic, often 'Chaotic', paths. So if there is a Creator, assuming for the sake of this argument, the best he could do was defining the natural or universal laws, set up the initial conditions of the universe and then let nature take its course, rather than meticulously knitting the entire Grand Design from scratch to its present intricately complex, dynamic form. If there are, let's say, a thousand different universes created by God with the same set of laws and initial conditions, all of them will not be exactly identical. Some of them will have living worlds while some may not.

When we are born, we start our simulations of life, armed with a set of initial conditions in an environment of some predefined rules. But that does not fix our future. Luck becomes our constant companion and so Destiny, is ever evolving, never certain. Nothing is constant, and nothing can be taken for granted. Hard work does not ensure success. As it is with every other aspect of our lives, success and failures are also to a significant extent are shaped by Luck - pure chance events. Destiny is not real but accidents are.

So, is it futile to try and try, knowing very well that it will not automatically lead us to our desired goal? In a world full of possibilities and probabilities, the best approach is to be optimistic, because anything is likely to happen - both the bad and the good. Fate is decided by both our actions and the whims and fancies of Lady Luck. We only have control over what we do, so to make success our destination, not with absolute certainty but to make it ever so likely, we must do our part diligently. Wooing Lady Luck, after all, is not easy but hard work and positive mindset makes it a strong possibility.

Fortune (1754) by Tadeusz Kuntze. The painting depicts Roman Goddess Fortuna - goddess of Luck. Image source: Wikimedia