5.g 不要相信“运气”，更不要相信“机不可失失不再来”

Make Time Your Friend 5.g: Don't Believe in Luck, Still Less in "Now or Never"

> By Li Xiaolai · 2008-05-19 · [Original (web archive)](https://web.archive.org/web/20111113133142/http://www.lixiaolai.com/archives/446.html) (Chinese)
> Our translation from the Chinese original.

What exactly luck (luck) is, is a question especially worth serious thought. If you can't think this question through thoroughly, you may keep wasting time because of a wrong understanding—and examples of people who actually waste a whole lifetime because of it can be seen everywhere, past or present, in China or abroad.

First, luck really does exist. Some people can fly safely for twenty or thirty years and then retire with honor, yet some people die in an accident the very first time they take a plane. When the Titanic left port back then, some people, at the last moment, suddenly changed their travel dates because of something or other and so escaped a great catastrophe, yet several others who had sneaked onto the ship in the end couldn't escape death. Some people bought Mark Six lottery tickets all their lives and finally won, only to find they had lost the ticket, yet how is it that someone buys a lottery ticket for the first time in his life and wins the jackpot—that's a probability of 1/18,000,000!

Moreover, luck comes in good and bad. If the probability of winning the Mark Six jackpot is 1/18,000,000 and you actually win, you'll "feel" you're very lucky. Conversely, if, if you actually bought all 18,000,000 Mark Six tickets, and the one you happened to carelessly lose was exactly the jackpot winner, you'll "feel" you're very unlucky.

But the problem is, why does the same probability of 1/18,000,000 make you experience feelings as different as heaven and earth? The probability is the same; what differs is your desire. When you feel "lucky," it's because your desire is satisfied; when you feel "unlucky," it's because your desire is disappointed.

So, from a rational standpoint, so-called luck as we can experience it is just a feeling produced by the occurrence of a low-probability event. Although probability can sometimes be calculated, it's certainly not something you can control. Desire, although it can't always be satisfied, is something you can not only control, but perhaps control completely. People who waste time and fritter away their years share a common trait—they desperately try to control what they cannot control at all, yet completely lose control where they really can take charge.

You must think this through clearly and remember it: believing in luck is actually a sign of lacking self-control. I've always felt that having, by chance, studied probability and statistics seriously in college was an accident that has benefited me endlessly all my life. The reading and thinking of that period made me certain of, and calmly accepting of, one reality: probability exists independently of anyone, and therefore will absolutely not change in any way merely because of my expectations. Li Zongsheng (李宗盛) says in "Song of Ordinary People" (《凡人歌》), "I ask you, when have you ever seen this world change for people's sake?" Hearing it made my heart tremble. So, in essence, luck is nothing but a real existence that has nothing to do with me. In other words, although luck really exists, I can't believe in luck—or, to put it completely, I can't believe luck has anything to do with me.

Such an understanding can only make you more and more rational. When you see the referee on the basketball court toss a coin to decide who serves first, you know this is fair; and when you glimpse some of the players on both sides actually closing their eyes in prayer, you know their behavior is actually laughable, ineffective, and utterly beside the point. You'll surely always remember that moment clearly, the instant you first realized that by accepting reality you could control yourself, and merely because of this be stronger than most people. You begin to understand why so many people superstitiously believe in blood types and star signs, consult the almanac to decide their fortunes, secretly make offerings to seek good omens, or put curses on the sly in hopes that people they dislike or hate come to a bad end. Without exception, these are actually just another way people show weakness and helplessness when facing a reality they can't control at all.

People dislike, even fear, things they can't control. Moreover, the more fragile a person is, the more he wants to gain control; at the same time, the more he realizes he has no control, the more afraid he is. The most amusing related scene in films is a mouse-hearted person trembling as he holds a gun yet shouting loudly to his companions, "(Can't you see?) It's under my control!" So Emerson ([Ralph Waldo Emerson](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ralph_Waldo_Emerson)) said, "The weak believe in luck; the strong believe only in cause and effect." (Shallow men believe in luck. Strong men believe in cause and effect.) An interesting phenomenon is that all true kings of gambling don't believe in luck. They don't stay undefeated because of "good luck"; the reason they win more than they lose is only that they spend more time and energy studying and calculating probabilities; they only find ways to win and never gamble. Conversely, those who actually believe in luck and love to gamble are destined to come to a bad end.

When good luck happens to you, of course you should be very happy; when bad luck befalls you, you should calmly accept it—no matter what, you have to go on living, and of course go on facing things you can't control. Actually, this is the attitude to life Su Shi (苏轼) summed up long ago: "Not alarmed when something suddenly befalls him, not angered when something is imposed on him without cause."

Observe the people around you with this understanding, and you're very likely to reach agreement with me quickly. Those who believe "good luck" exists are actually often pinning their hopes on the appearance of so-called "miracles" in order to escape an awkward present, hoping extravagantly to turn their salted-fish lives around with ease—they forget that a salted fish that has turned over is still a salted fish. And those who believe "bad luck" exists are often escaping their own past responsibility. If a person is unwilling to take responsibility for an existing awkward situation, of course the most convenient thing to do is complain about bad luck. Believe me, if you're willing to face your real self calmly, you'll eventually find that you bear more or less responsibility for every awkward situation you face today. There are very many reasons to believe in luck; the French writer and filmmaker Jean Cocteau (基恩•哥克顿) (Jean Cocteau) joked, "We must believe in luck. Otherwise how can we explain that people we don't like actually succeed?" (We must believe in luck. For how else can we explain the success of those we don't like?)

In addition, there's an especially amusing psychological phenomenon. If you believe in good luck, your life won't become better or worse because of it. But conversely, if you just feel you're an unlucky wretch, your life will surely [Translator's note: the original writes 确定定会, a garbled 肯定会 or 一定会 ("will surely"); translated by the intended sense] become worse because of it. So, although you shouldn't be blindly optimistic, you must never live pessimistically. What's amazing is that effort often really does change a person's luck. Nearly two thousand five hundred years ago [Translator's note: so in the original; Seneca lived about two thousand years ago, in the first century AD], Seneca (Roman philosopher, tragedian, statesman) put this very clearly: "So-called luck is when opportunity comes just as you are prepared." (Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity.)

When any swindler in the world makes his move, the first step is to do everything possible to make the victim believe that "opportunity knocks but once"; and once the victim believes this is a "rare, not-to-be-missed" opportunity, he'll make irrational choices under the pressure this thought brings. So never believe "opportunity knocks but once." When you aren't prepared, for you no opportunity exists. Opportunities appear around you all the time; the key is whether you've worked hard enough to be like Zhuge Liang (诸葛亮), "everything ready, lacking only the east wind." And when you're prepared, there are opportunities everywhere, and all the opportunities are real ones that can be seized

That's exactly why we value effort. Although Knight's view is indeed correct: "effort," compared with the other two factors—birth and luck—is the least significant. But we can see many real examples: a considerable number of people, past or present, in China or abroad, really did, through "effort," eventually change their "luck," and thereby change their children's "birth."

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