Monday 27 June 2022: Although I assume it is not certain that everything is uncertain, I have never, strictly-speaking, been either a fatalist or a teleologist.
Relatedly, while I believe God has a plan for me, indeed for all of humankind, I don’t think for a second it takes the form of a blueprint. It entails rather a calling to think and act within the framework of a virtue ethic which emphasises the primacy of love.
This means I am at best ambivalent about the role played by luck – defined as some force external to human volition – in the ordering of my life, or anyone else’s come to that.
True, unexpected coincidences are a feature of all our lives; but they surely don’t provide evidence that luck exists as a tangible compulsion or constraint. Aren’t such phenomena what we call ‘chance’?
‘Being lucky’ or ‘being unlucky’, it seems to me, are post-event descriptors. One’s luck therefore neither literally holds nor runs out because it is neither tangible nor substantial.
This evening, my latest chess opponent, before we start our game, will shake my hand and wish me “good luck”. This will undoubtedly be a kindly gesture. But it will be one without any actual substance. A bit like saying “have a nice day”.
So, the recent death, aged just 33, of a Labour comrade of mine – Hadleigh Roberts – had nothing to do with him having bad luck. It was a cancer that killed him.
Similarly, surviving a heart attack nearly two years ago, while undoubtedly fortunate, had nothing to do with me being lucky. Rather, it had everything to do with me speedily getting the correct treatments on admission to hospital.
It shouldn’t need saying, but Hadleigh’s death and my recovery also weren’t part of God’s plan for each of us. Neither was ‘written in advance’.
The literal non-existence of luck doesn’t however stop us from imagining it can be fostered. Consider the Test Match cricket commentator and former England captain, Michael Atherton. Reflecting on a sudden change in good fortune experienced by an England bowler in a recent international match, he said: “If you keep doing the basics, then eventually your luck will turn”. I don’t think so, Michael. The good fortune you are describing was a happy coincidence of events. Chance, in other words. What if the bowler – still doing the basics – hadn’t taken another wicket? Would that have been bad luck? Surely not. Rather, it would have been a case of the batters being better and the fielding being blameable. Or a change in the weather or state of the wicket?
Or mull over Logan Mountstuart’s philosophy of life. Who? He’s the anti-hero of William Boyd’s picaresque novel, Any Human Heart, whose summary of life’s meaning, as explained to him by his dying father is: “That’s all our lives amount to in the end: the aggregate of all the good luck and the bad luck you experience. Everything is explained by that simple formula.”
Is it? I am pretty sure it isn’t. Indeed, Logan’s bad life chances, as Boyd describes them, seem to me to have less to do with luck than with him too often making the wrong calls.
Non-fictionally, former PM John Major’s remark today that the 1000s of victims of the contaminated blood scandal in the 70s and 80s were casualties of “incredible bad luck” diverts public attention away from the fact that government at the time made some bad calls too, leading to many unnecessary deaths.
I suppose it’s for this reason that I do not dwell too negatively on my own missed opportunities and errors of judgement, despite regretting them very much, entirely because they have been more than compensated for by the chance of seizing other openings, both personal and professional.
In fact, I am almost embarrassed at how much good fortune I have had, especially with timing – in my career, in my partnering, in my parenting, and in my church going. But, on each occasion, I wasn’t a beneficiary of luck; I was instead someone who acted in ways that brought about a desired result, often with the help of others. Teleology had nothing to do with it.
Attending Mass yesterday, on the Second Sunday After Trinity, caused me to reflect explicitly on this aspect. The Psalm for the service was the sixteenth. It’s one of the Lauds/Prime Psalms, which means in St Benedict’s Psalmody it is sung at or near first light, having a strong tone of grateful thankfulness for the day that is about to begin. It also has an air of confidence about it. Verses 5 and 6 especially struck home: The Lord is my chosen portion and my cup/you hold my lot/The boundary lines have fallen for me in pleasant places/I have a goodly heritage.
I do have a “goodly heritage”, for which I am enormously grateful; and which I try hard never to take for granted.
It is the product of three forces: the supporting love and affection provided by those closest to me, notably Kathryn and Jake and Chloe; the counsel and encouragement of 5 individuals during my career and retirement: Paul King (my favourite grammar school teacher), John Reynolds (my PhD supervisor), Patrick Eavis (my best teaching colleague), Geoff Whitty (my academic boss and mentor at UCL), and Tom Middleton (my most important Christian mentor); and my own efforts to make the most of myself.
Some might say I was lucky my path crossed with that of each of the people, excepting my children, who I have just listed.
I prefer to say I picked them out as individuals from whom I thought I would benefit, and they generously gave me their time and attention, helping to nurture in me that virtue ethic which I mentioned at the start.
It wasn’t then chance that brought us together. It was circumstance that I helped, with them, to create.