Luck

Hi Mom,
Sorry that I've been AWOL for a couple days.
I'm back on track now after a day and a half of being on the GSD plan (Get S**t Done Plan).
I missed St. Patrick's Day here b/c I just got home from Calgary and was so exhausted that I just went to bed the other night.
So...here is one of my favourite photos, in honour of St. Patrick's day...of a bouquet of 4-leaf clovers that I found all one day, if you can believe it!

According to history (and the internet), the leaves represent 4 different things - one leaf for hope, one leaf for love, one leaf for health and one leaf for wealth.


The legend says that if you find a 4-leaf clover, you should put it in your shoe and it will bring you luck. But, if you give your clover away to someone else, instead, it will bring both you and the other person even more luck.

And so it goes...with life too...I think.
The more we give, the more we receive.

And this is what my mom taught me for sure. I'm not sure she believes in "luck". Well, except, maybe at bingo or something like that. But not in life. From growing up, I clearly saw that luck was created by the person you were and through your actions.

I remember failing my drivers licence test when I was 16. I practised and practised. OMG, did I practise. I remember taking my brother Steve on trips around the neighbourhood, stopping at 7-11 for a slurpee and sun-flower seeds on the way, and then forcing him to hang out with me while I drove...and drove...and drove. Well, until the slurpee was gone, anyway.

My twin-sister, on the other hand, had a different approach. She did not practise at all. She said that, when I passed my test, and she failed, that I could just drive her around until she took the test over again, a couple weeks later. It seemed like a good plan to her. And to me. I didn't care. All I knew was that I was going to be ready.

Well, that was the plan, anyway.

It didn't quite work out like that.

In our lemon-yellow 4-door, 1982 Dodge Aries K-car (I think it was a dodge?), I failed my drivers test.

Badly!

Carla, on the other hand, passed!

She was as surprised as I was! I was more than surprised. I was shocked, not that she passed, but that I failed.

Going home, pouting for a while and then talking to mom about it, I said that I just wasn't very lucky that day. My mom said, and I can remember her words exactly, "Luck had nothing to do with it." Then she and I looked at my paper and she explained what I did wrong...rolled through a stop sign, failed parallel parking part, didn't stop (again) at the white line at another intersection...it went on and on.

I was soooo confident (probably a bit too confident for the instructor's liking!), yet I just didn't do everything perfectly. She was right. Luck had nothing to do with it.

To this day, I remember going back to re-write my test, passing, and clearly understanding the difference between being lucky and setting myself up for success.

When I look back on my life thus far, I see that, YES, I've been lucky - OFTEN! But I've worked hard. Very hard. So many people call me lucky now, b/c the hostel business worked out and my life truly is wonderful in so many ways, but they weren't there during those very dark days and tough times, when we were broke, living in one room (well, 2 actually) at the hostel, pushing the dresser against the door at night so it was secure, or risking it all to make it happen. I remember calling my mom during those times, too, and she just kept on saying to me, "Just put your head down and work. It's going to pay off."

Well, and then she came out for 3 weeks to help in the beginning and then every year or two after that, until things got easier. (I was very lucky here!)

I now see what luck really is made of for me = working hard, calling my mom, a dose of commitment to my plan and probably a whole lot of prayers (from Mom, for me) when I needed them most. Oh..yeah...and coming to a full-stop at that stop sign, even though no one else ever does that again once they get their license!

Love you, Mom.
More to come tonight!
Thanks for teaching me what luck is really all about.
Crystal