Crossed fingers

A lot of people are adamant they achieve things through their own efforts. Luck has nothing to do with it, they say. It's all hard work, determination and shrewdness.

I think they're kidding themselves. Yes, a bit of hard graft is needed. But so many things are down to luck. Being in the right place at the right time. Knowing the right people. Being first in the queue. Hearing something on the grapevine. There are plenty of people who work their asses off with nothing much to show for it.

I know how much luck I've had in my own life. So many things that could have gone horribly pear-shaped worked out surprisingly well. I benefited from the years of prosperity that were followed by recession and shrinking opportunities. Quite by chance I picked up skills that have come in useful ever since.

Other people have even greater luck. They inherit huge sums of money. They win the lottery. They're born to well-connected and multi-talented parents, or turn out to be prodigiously talented themselves. They happen to invent something that becomes a universal must-have.

Knowing as I do how much of my life has depended on good luck, I'm always a bit nervous about the future. Will this astonishing run of luck continue or will it abruptly hit the buffers? Will I suddenly find myself in dire straits, the rug pulled from underneath me? All I can do is cross my fingers, hope for the best and keep on truckin'.

So what will the future bring? Windfalls or pitfalls? Thrills or bills? Trick or treat?

Not really poor

Linda Tirado of Washington DC, who had known a period of grinding poverty, wrote a piece for a website about what it's like being poor. The piece went viral and as usually happens, people started attacking her left right and centre.

And what were they attacking her for? For explaining poverty to people who were well-off and had no idea what it was really like. For telling people that poverty was real and not something invented by scrounging layabouts, journalists and lefties.

Of course they didn't say that. They just claimed she was never really poor because she came from a middle-class family. Or she wasn't really poor because it was only for a few years. Or she wasn't really poor because her wages were enough to live on.

They simply couldn't accept that someone can be genuinely poor, genuinely struggling to make ends meet, genuinely unable to get her rotten teeth or her clapped-out car fixed. They were convinced she was making it all up or wildly exaggerating.

As she puts it herself: "In America we have this myth that if you deserve it, you will have it. We're afraid to look at our downtrodden because it undercuts that myth. There is a fear of the poor that is uniquely American. It's especially hard to look at someone who could be one of their kids - someone like me who's white and intelligent - and see them as poor."

People lucky enough to have a good income and a comfortable life don't want to think about those who have neither. It makes them feel guilty, anxious, scared, vulnerable. They shy away from the possibility that a run of bad luck or some personal misfortune could see them sinking into poverty themselves.

The irony of Linda Tirado's story is that because of the huge readership her internet piece attracted she was able to raise over $60,000 to turn it into a book and quit her job as a night cook. She hasn't had her teeth fixed yet but she's using a better brand of shampoo.

Pic: Linda Tirado

Childless

One thing I really don't get is the extreme emotional misery some women go through when they find they're infertile. For them, it's not just bad luck, not just an unfortunate quirk of nature, it's something that tears them apart and makes life unbearable.

Tracey Richardson-Lyne, writing in the Observer today, says no one understands the sheer emotional pain of infertility - the feelings of grief, anger, jealousy, isolation, uselessness and failure.

She says that just walking around, seeing pregnant women, dads with pushchairs, or children looking for mummy or daddy, fills her with loneliness and dread.

She feels guilty that she can't reproduce like a "normal" woman, that she can't give her husband a child or her parents a grandchild.

To me, this seems like an oddly extreme reaction to something that should surely be no more than disappointing or frustrating. Can you not just accept the situation and find other things to do with your life? And surely a woman's identity shouldn't still be defined by whether she can reproduce or not? Or whether there's a toddler clutching at her?

But feelings are feelings, and just because I don't understand them, it doesn't mean they're invalid and she shouldn't be having them. If she's in emotional pain, then of course she needs help to deal with the pain and hopefully, one day, get pregnant.

Emotional pain is so much easier to bear if at least other people have been through something similar and can understand what you're feeling. It must be so much worse if you're bearing it alone amid widespread incomprehension.

I can't judge her. I can only wish her some relief from what she's going through, some respite from the suffocating misery.

Future shock

I have what you might call future-phobia*. I'm nervous about the future and what it might bring. I don't have that optimistic horizon that most people possess.

Where other people assume the future will bring something better than they have right now, that life is essentially a matter of onwards and upwards, my imagination runs riot with all manner of unpleasant possibilities.

I'll run out of money; I'll go senile; I'll get some dreadful illness; the house will fall down; I'll live to 100, by which time I'll be a brainless vegetable; I'll die alone and not be found for weeks; I'll turn into a crazy eccentric, shouting at people in buses; I'll be dumped in some vile care home; and so on and so forth.

Why do I have these gloomy (and extremely unlikely) scenarios? Why don't I assume the exact opposite,a happy and healthy old age in which nothing very nasty happens and I enjoy all the things I enjoy right now?

After all, the future, by definition, is largely unknowable. Anything could happen, and there are sure to be plenty of surprises and odd quirks of fate. Good luck is just as likely as bad luck, and to dwell on the second is irrational and perverse.

But then, as we all know, humans are irrational creatures and trying to banish the irrational from our psyches is no easy task. I can tell myself over and over that my fears are unbalanced, that I'm looking at things from a lop-sided perspective, but the fears defy my earnest logic.

No doubt in twenty years' time, if I'm still on this planet, I'll laugh at all the absurd fears of my earlier years and wonder how on earth I imagined such grim turns of event. And then I'll have a chocolate biscuit and a nice cup of tea.

* It's very common but there doesn't seem to be a technical name for it. Secret Agent Woman, any ideas?

Guilt

Guilt is an ambiguous thing. It can be a healthy feeling of regret and the need to put something right. Or it can be a hopeless neurosis, a constant brooding over past mistakes.

Men are assumed to be low on guilt, just ploughing ahead regardless and not too worried about the consequences of what they do. Anyone who objects is seen as an oversensitive fuss-butt, unable to deal with real life.

Women are thought to be guilt-ridden, forever wondering if they've caused offence or not been generous enough or treated someone badly. They're always ready to apologise, declare their own shortcomings and make frantic amends.

I have to say I follow the male pattern here. I seldom feel guilty and I tend to think that if something I do causes some unexpected disaster or distresses someone, it's really just bad luck. Of course I'll do what I can to put things right, but I don't lose any sleep over it and I don't beat myself up over my miscalculations.

It occurs to me though that if men were a bit more prone to guilt, a lot of the horrendous massacres and barbarities they've carried out across the world wouldn't have happened. If they could feel a shred of human empathy with the victims of their atrocities, they wouldn't be capable of them.

But too much guilt can paralyse a person and make them so timid and hesitant their whole life stalls. They blame themselves for everything and can't accept that shit happens despite the best of intentions.

A smattering of guilt helps us to be civilised. But too much of it can be a millstone.

PS: Is there a difference between regret (feeling you did something wrong) and guilt (feeling bad about it)?

Lucking out

As I get older, I'm constantly amazed and relieved at all the disasters and misfortunes I've somehow managed to avoid, despite all my personal failings and extreme scattiness.

While others have been plagued by huge debts, nasty illnesses, homelessness or chronic addictions, I've been lucky enough to get through life without any serious burdens dragging me down.

I'm not an addictive personality, so I've never succumbed to over-indulgence in drugs, alcohol, pornography, gambling or dieting. I'm naturally inclined to moderation in all things, some would say excessively so to the extent that I'm too guarded and never let go enough.

I've always had a horror of debt, so I keep a close eye on what I'm spending. I'm convinced that I only have to be in hock to the tune of a few hundred pounds and this'll trigger off a breakneck slippage to the sort of eye-watering debts you read about in the papers.

I've managed to hold on to my home, even when jobless or earning a pittance. Of course in my younger days I made do with seedy bedsits hardly big enough to swing a cat and the rents were correspondingly modest. And it helps if you have someone else to chip in with a hefty mortgage.

Grisly illnesses have so far passed me by, despite my sister having MND and my father having a stroke at 55. Being a vegetarian with a fairly healthy lifestyle must reduce the risk but only up to a point. I've never been in a serious car crash or done a hazardous job. I missed the Kings Cross station inferno in 1987 by a matter of minutes.

How come I'm not labouring under some colossal mishap? How come I'm not in jail or in a street doorway or in a rehab centre? It could easily have happened if my life had taken a different route. There but for the grace of God go I.

Luck of the draw

Why is it some people have endless bad luck, hit by one disaster after another, while others are blessed by constant good fortune? Is it purely the whim of fate or is it their own attitude to life?

People who've done well for themselves are fond of saying it's due entirely to their own effort and single-mindedness, that anyone who wants to succeed can do so if their really want to. They're where they are because they deserve it.

But it simply isn't true. There are millions of people languishing in dead-end jobs and crime-ridden estates who're just as hard-working and intelligent but are perpetually held back by forces beyond their control.

We're more at the mercy of luck than we like to think. So much depends on our personality and our circumstances, what we were landed with when we came into this world and what happened to us as we grew up and came to grips with the adult world and its challenges.

If you have parents who're alcoholics or criminals or are mentally disturbed, who have no idea how to bring up children and treat you as a nuisance and a liability, what chance do you have of a fruitful life unless you're uncannily resilient and self-motivated? Not very much.

But if you have sober, responsible parents who love you and cherish you, who help you to develop your abilities and talents, who give you self-confidence and determination, your life is immeasurably different and you have a real prospect of achieving your hopes and dreams.

Even when we're grown up, so much hinges on random events we can't control. What our bosses are like, what area we live in, who we happen to meet, how healthy we are. Or whether we're struck by natural disasters like earthquakes or tsunamis. Our destiny can change overnight from prosperous to broke, from despair to joy.

But it's still often said that those who are poor deserve to be poor, that the wealthy and successful have pulled themselves up by their own bootstraps. It's a wicked lie that keeps countless people trapped in wretched and unfulfilling lives.