Lucky Duck.

photo source: unknown

I'm going to let you in on a little secret:

I am the luckiest person I know.

Now before you go thinking I'm the most arrogant person you know, hear me out. My secret isn't that I'm the luckiest person I know. The secret is that I believe it to be true, and therefore it is. Anyone who has heard of the book The Secret inevitably finds the familiarity in this statement.

I read about this type of belief system not in that world-renowned book, but on a blog that I follow. The author admitted that she hadn't always felt herself to be this way, but one day someone told her this truth about themselves and how impactful it had been. You see, I never felt that I was terribly fortunate. I've had some crappy, crummy, downright awful things happen to myself and the people I care about in my life. But somewhere along the line, I stopped seeing those things are these terrible things happening to me, and began to see them in a new light. The light that I'm talking to you about now.

When you see yourself as lucky, the bad things in your life no longer seem so dire. The things that happen aren't an end-all. They become lessons. They become opportunities. Even things that would appear to be devastating somehow become a part of The Plan, and less like a punishment for something you don't remember doing. And for some reason they begin to space further and further from one another.

Life, in my opinion, has nothing to do with what happens to you. It has everything to do with what you do in response to what happens to you. I stand firm in that belief  THAT is the person you are- not a summation of the situations you find yourself thrown into.

There are months where my life seems tough. This month, for example, had been one of those. But in the middle of my feeling pretty down about it, a series of events began to take place- reminding me once again that I am the luckiest person I know. People began to weave into my life, some new and some old, and remind me that people are GOOD. New opportunities presented themselves to me- ones that would never have been given were the "tough parts" of my life no longer on the agenda. The bad things in my life have always, always, always given way to some of the greatest opportunities I've had the fortune of meeting.

Is this because I am truly as lucky as I claim to be? Is it karma? I don't know. Maybe. It might also be the rose-colored glasses I've acquired in my quest to see my life as a fortunate one. All I know is that once I began to see the good, the good has been all I've seen. Maybe THAT'S all that good fortune is, after all. Focusing on the good in the first place.