Luck in nature

Nature at work

THE AVERAGE HUMAN is not especially attractive to look at. If they are, they may not be especially good at anything, or they may be. It all depends on luck – and this woman has it; she is extremely attractive and very good at sport – golf as it happens. It makes her lucky compared to someone who is both unattractive and not much good at anything, which is most of us.

It does not seem fair that some people have all the luck. If you are fabulously good looking, as this woman is, and also brilliant at, say, a particular sport that people like to watch, it may seem more likely you will make a success of your life and be really happy. Perhaps you hardly need to try, that fame and fortune fall right in your lap. I would imagine that is a rarity though. Being a sporting success usually means a lot of work plus more luck, because there is always a certain amount of luck in winning anything in open competition.

I don't think that's quite as it works. Plain people (plainness and beauty are not real things anyway, but imaginary) often seem as happy with themselves as beautiful people. If they have learned to live with who they are, then why not? Or they are naturally optimistic, or lucky enough to be really good at something in which looks don't matter and they had the determination to succeed, or for a lot of other reasons depending on their circumstances.

By the same token, gorgeous individuals often make a mess of their lives, either by their own stupidity or they had very bad luck in something they could not control. It could be anything that has nothing to do with how good-looking they are, like, for instance, an accident that can happen to anyone regardless of their physical appearance, or they got swindled by their agent, or they married the wrong person, or whatever.

Was Johnny Depp happy in 2020? Was this woman?

Luck in nature can obviously apply to anything. An oak tree for instance. It depends on where the acorn fell from and what it landed on, and whether it was buried by a squirrel and never actually grew. A few acorns become magnificent trees which stand for 500 years, but most come to very little, or nothing, as you can see for yourself if you walk in a forest.

An acorn, however, has no expectations. It neither knows nor cares how big an oak tree it becomes or how long it lives, or whether it grows at all. Humans have expectations which dictate their lives from early on, as soon as they watch TV, or listen to their parents, or nursery assistants, and then look in a mirror. Is this woman lucky or is everything in life about managing expectations? No average male in his right mind would attempt to woo such a woman unless he was enormously rich to make up for his aesthetic deficiencies. It is noticeable how males and females (and same-sex couples in this day and age) almost always manage to match themselves up with a partner they can probably keep hold of, each of them having precisely the same amount of beauty as the other, or plainness as the case may be. Being lucky is perhaps less about your starting position as being able to see yourself for what you are.