Beginner’s Luck

The term beginner’s luck is used most often in gambling or sport. When a person with limited knowledge and practically no experience achieves a result which is better than an expected one it is called beginner’s luck. Theoretically speaking this defies the Rosenthal effect, which states that students who are expected to perform better usually perform better. But statistically speaking, people who randomly achieve better results in something are likely to develop an interest in that thing; thereby honing their skills to become an expert at it. Another archaic rather philosophical reason is that the universe conspires in ones favour to work things out.

The cause for this phenomenon is unknown but the speculation, however, is that it usually happens because of a disconnect between the person involved and the pressure. A novice, lacking expertise and experience, is usually not expected to do well and is therefore under less pressure as compared to a seasoned person. This lack of pressure thus allows the person to concentrate more than his veteran counterpart.

Practically speaking none of this is applicable to a large extent. I would like to quote an example of a person from my immediate family. This person breezed through his academics without an iota of concern about anything and he did fantastically well for himself too. A couple of years down the line he got serious about his life and he then realized that good old lady luck had suddenly abandoned him to fend for himself. Despite his best efforts he was jobless for one whole year and couldn’t do much about it apart from getting flustered.

All of us are inadvertently careless initially. But there also comes a time in our lives when we get serious about our affairs and that is exactly the point when things just change drastically. Before this it’s mostly the beginner’s luck which sees us through. Most people generally don’t come to realize this. They think that they are born lucky and come what may they are bound to succeed. Giving up opportunities which literally knocks on their doors. Always uncompromising, thinking that the best would naturally work out for them.

Here’s a thing about luck; which still is a superset of beginner’s luck.
Luck is not chance -
It's Toil -
Fortune's expensive smile
Is earned -
The Father of the Mine
Is that old-fashioned Coin
We spurned -

Emily Dickinson

Horoscopes

Horoscopes, zodiac: sun sign, Chinese animal signs, tarots, numerology, et cetra. I, for one, have been a person who has never believed in any of it and the thing is that I still don’t. I have always wondered what compels people to go to shrinks and palmists. What is it that people seek with their future being foretold?

None of these things have intrigued me ever; but to be honest I’ve also once gotten a tarot reading done and given a chance I’m quite sure I’d do it again. My reason then was mostly curiosity and to cross-check the authenticity of it. The thing is that I’ve always seen my horoscope and then tried to find faults and loop-holes in it.

That being my reason, I was unable to understand others psyche for the same; until a few months back. For some apparent and not so apparent reasons my life stooped to a new level then. Candidly speaking I had actually hit the bottom of the barrel when it came to my confidence and optimism levels. That was exactly when I started depending on most of these things mentioned above. When I say depend what I actually mean is that absolutely look forward to any and all of it, every single day. In retrospect I think I do understand my dependence then on horoscopes, so much so. I then was on a desperate lookout for change and seeing none I used to refer to horoscopes, to find one. I was actually trying to find a reason to convince myself that things would change. Not that they don’t with time but with no improvement in sight, I was trying to look at my horoscopes, as a harbinger of the much needed change. Which could perhaps give me an inclination about the time when things and situations would be different; bringing with it the relief that I needed.

It’s quite funny how the human mind works, come to think of it. I rarely look at my horoscope these days but I think I do understand now, why a lot of people do so. I’m quite sure that they have their various other reasons too but one things for sure that horoscopes do give us some hope at desperate times.

The Bitter Truth

We all love to make those beautiful sandcastles when on sandy beaches, don’t we? It’s a piece of art and if worked upon properly can be an extreme delight to the eye. When making sandcastles one has to aptly mix fine and coarse sand granules so that the balance is restored. Come to think of it our life is also pretty much the same- a befitting mixture of fine and coarse things. You have more of either and things go haywire, making life one big mess. What we can do is to work up a magic with sand and water to make the whole thing look breathtakingly beautiful. But what we cannot do is to live in that beautiful castle of sand. As prepossessing as it might be but the truth is that it’s far far away from reality: the so called truth.

That’s truth for us. Not to say that we all not know how bitter it is. Let us, for an instance, see how much of truth do we seek. Most of us ask for an opinion stating that we would ideally want to know the truth. Next time anyone does that, try doing psychoanalysis of the person and you would know how much one is interested in the ideal truth that he/she so promptly talks about. Here’s the real deal. Before asking for any kind of opinion we already form a preconceived one, in most cases. So what we actually do is to reconfirm it from the other person. If we get an affirmation we gladly accept it as a sound advice and if we don’t then we look for a second opinion. Apropos, if both the first and the second opinion live up to our expectations then we get really sure about the whole thing. Funny how the human mind works, eh? So what can clearly be seen is that we want anything but the truth in most cases.

Now that we talk about truth, let’s also talk about the one thing which makes it so god damn difficult to admit truth. That my friends is, hope. Why hope? Well, hope is the source of ones greatest strength and at the same time ones greatest weakness. Hope, innumerably, sees us through times where uncertainty prevails. But there are also times when it’s the damn hope that keeps us from accepting the truth. The thing about truth is that it gets bitterer and even more rancid, as time progresses. So the sooner we accept it the better off we are; else there’s life waiting to teach us the hard way.

To get rid of our false hopes what we ideally need is a hard slap of reality. It has to be really hard so that it brings all our false hopes crashing down. We need to understand that we can’t actually live in those castles of sand that look so aesthetic. Good part is that life is cruel enough or perhaps provident to make us realise. Matter-of-factly, it really hurts but at the same time it does what it’s supposed to do- open your goddamn eyes to the bitter truth.