If Given the Choice Between Blessing and Luck: I Choose Luck

Some thoughts about my unlikely career

Photo by Barbara Krysztofiak on Unsplash

In almost every significant way, I’m pretty run-of-the-mill in my Christian faith. Just conjure for yourself a generic low-protestant-American-Christian and you'll probably wind up with something close to me. I've always occupied a pew near the margins of my faith (horror movies, musical and literary taste, etc...), but I've never really crossed any Rubicons.

I do, however, hold one belief that puts a lot of my fellow believers off.

I believe in Luck, with a capital L. For some reason, this is offensive to Christians who prefer to talk about "Blessings," or "Blessed," or (worst of all) "#Blessed."

I don't know what to say. It's not a deal-breaker for me, but I prefer Luck over Blessed.

I am by almost any metric a very lucky person. I won't count all my blessings(!) here. And I think the discourse about "Privilege" (the progressive-liberal nightmare twin of #Blessed) is pretty played out.

Yes, I'd love to have my novel published, sure. But, I will absolutely admit to being as lucky as a person can reasonably be, in terms of family, job, home, security, meaningful experiences, friends, etc...

I was thinking about luck in terms of my job recently. There are two parts to this:

1). I work as an English teacher in higher ed. This is generally a recipe for existential disaster these days, in case you hadn't heard.

And the college I work for is one of the types that should be in really bad shape (small, non-selective, rural, so on). But we aren't. Things are going really well for us. And my weirdo ass fits right in there, to boot. I feel like the place and its people appreciate me and what I do. My office is covered with horror movie collectibles, and most people not only tolerate it; they seem to appreciate it.

And my teaching style is much more personable than it is "professional," and that is something that my peers and the institution seem to accept as well. Honestly, had I gotten one of those prestigious English-prof jobs at a notable college or university, I think I would have been a disaster there. But here? It works. I'm lucky that way.

2). How I even got to be an English professor in the first place. My life was not on this trajectory. At all. I was a major ne'er-do-well in my teens and early twenties. I bounced around college for a few years and finally dropped out because I realized I had no business being there.

I worked a lot of menial jobs in the first half-decade of my twenties (retail, rubber mill, boathouse attendant, etc...) then made a radical decision to move to New York. There I was able to shake off the old me and start again. Back in Ohio, I somehow wormed my way into a job in the engineering department of a local TV station. At some point, I decided I'd like to work in production, but needed a degree to do that. So I went back to college. And here is where luck took over.

By whatever quirk of logistics, the fastest degree for me to finish was English, which was fine (I'd developed a taste for books and art by then, all on my own). I did well. And in my last semester, a professor (the amazing Dr. Martha Cutter, to whom I am forever grateful), talked me into going to grad school. And then somehow (luck mostly, I suspect) I was accepted into the grad program at Case Western Reserve.

And here I am, just having finished my 10th year at Mount Aloysius College, where I am so lucky to be employed. (There were also those three years at another school, which may or may not be the inspiration for my unpublished novel: contact me if you'd like to read it. I’m serious).

So what I'm saying is. I have been very lucky. The life I led in my formative years should have precluded me from all the good stuff in my life.

To call me #blessed makes me uncomfortable, as it implies God making decisions for me that he denies other people. If I am wrong about this, so be it. God can deal with me later.