Destiny, Luck and Fortune

DESTINY, LUCK AND FORTUNE

VICTOR MANUEL GUZMAN VILLENA

We have said that the luck consists of the fact that happens something favorable or adverse beyond of an effective prevention. There exists a significant difference between the luck and the fortune. An individual is furtunate whenever something good happens following the normal course of the things. Nevertheless, is lucky when the benefit comes.

In spite of being doubtful and especially if it happens in spite of being slightly probable and against any reasonable expectation. A person who inherits a big quantity of money, is going to be able to travel in first class is fortunate, but, in strict sense, it is not possible to say that this person is lucky.

On the contrary, the passenger of a plane to which the crew changes his tourist's seat to the first class, is possible to affirm that he has been lucky. Usually, the destiny and the fortune have to do with the conditions and specific circumstances of our lives, while the luck is in the ambience of the good or bad things that happen to us for coincidence.

Our capacity and innate talents are at the side of the good fortune; the opportunities that the coincidence puts in our way to develop them at the side of the luck. To have a cold is a misfortune, it happens often to many people, if that happens to someone the day when is going to a premiere is to have no luck.

You have to inherit an immense fortune thanks to a favorable destiny, but it is possible to be said that you are a person with luck if you inherit it just on time to save you from the bankruptcy.

The luck and the coincidence constitute two faces of the same coin. But the destiny is something different, something that is not chance. Let's suppose that it is discovered that an enormous meteorite, which has not been detected, is on the point of clashing with the earth. The destiny of the humanity is marked. During a certain number of days, the earth will be covered by a cloud of dust that will make the continuation of the life impossible for the mammals. What a catastrophe!

In these circumstances we will be able to say that the extinction of the human species, definitely speaking, is a misfortune, but we might not say that we have had no luck. It is the element of the surprise, of the coincidence and of the unpredictable thing, what allows us to distinguish the luck of the destination, or of the fortune in general.

The dangerous of the luck means that in interactions where one part runs with all the risks, and the only one can be lucky. The sponsors of the lottery are destined to win, but only the players can be lucky.

The same can be applied to the casinos where the things are organized in such a way that the house “always wins”. Of the same way, we can be lucky, in certain circumstances, for example being red-haired (in case this peculiarity makes us eligible for securing a certain benefit), nevertheless, we cannot say someone should be lucky only for the fact of be. Nevertheless, the red-haired individuals are lucky if the sponsor decides that they should be the beneficiaries of his generosity.

The luck is unforeseeable. And this is reflected in the inconsistency and in to the variable of the luck. A Scotch proverb of 1721 says: "Behind the bad luck the good one comes." (The opposite is also true). There is another old maxim that he says: "The only sure thing of the luck is that it changes.”

Only if we believe that we get a life in luck, as if it was a question of a share-out at random, we can interpret the global destination of a person in luck terms. In this case the entire sum of everything good and the bad thing that happens to an individual remains limited, in a global and automatic way, to a matter of eventful assign. Obviously it seems slightly realistic.

And so, it is considered that a person is lucky for being gifted in the field of the mathematics, but we cannot say that this person should be lucky with regard to the mathematics because the coincidence is not implied. His gift and his capacity are integral parts of the mentioned person; it is not anything that the hazard provides him and that be added to his current identity.

A person is lucky if he finds in his life a person who stimulates him or helps him to develop his own capacities. But the fact of having the mentioned capacity has to be with the fortune and not with the luck.

It has no sense to establish comparisons between the personal destination and the gambling games, because in case of the games there always exists a player who has been in a competition earlier, while in case of the people a precedent never exists, an individual deprived of identity that obtains everything for having a special quality.

The distinction that occupies us is not pure and completely one to have to realize of the different uses of the terms “luck“ and “fortune“.

It is necessary, to do some clarifications of linguistic character. When we ask a girl who says to us that she has just being engaged: "Who is the lucky one?", it would be necessary to use the word fortune and to ask: Who is the furtunate one?, whenever we want to avoid any other type of suggestion that would make us think that she has extracted the name of a hat.

It would be necessary to speak so about fortune and not about luck. The distinction between both, bearing in mind that the second one bears an eventful element which the first one lacks, sometimes is not present in the common use where any occasional infraction is detected.