This idea awakens in me when I see the old man sitting on the ground by the street. In front of him on a carpet or cardboard he has laid out items for sale. These items look, to me, completely random: a book, some CD:s, some things with text written on them. I only glance down as I pass by on the sidewalk, mostly to make sure not to step on any of his goods. He is old and sitting quite relaxed and I think that what are the chances even of someone passing by and finding exactly what they want or need within this pile of random stuff? What are the chances that a person, looking for exactly this book, will come by and buy it from him? On what whim might anyone buy any of these items?

The street is pretty busy, I have to admit, maybe the chances aren’t bad at all. I wonder how much stuff he has already sold.

Something in this, in him sitting on the street selling these items, makes me think that this is a way to hand oneself over to trust fate, or luck.

It makes me think that in my home cultures we have very deliberately built infrastructures to eliminate vulnerability and thereby also luck. We gather information, organize and make systems to eliminate hazard and protect people. To eliminate chance and to better the odds.

And maybe it’s not so strange then that our societies are turning to be more and more secular as people increasingly gain the feeling of having power by distancing themselves from luck and coincidence.

I feel like I grow to better understand how some people have a deep faith in god. Not only because of being in a culture where atheism is rare, but also by seeing people living with a lot less safety in their lives than in the countries where I grew up. I imagine that people growing up seeing a lot of misery, inequality and vulnerability learn to identify with those sensations, even in situations where they themselves are spared from direct suffering. It is easy to identify with suffering bodies. The question of “why them and not me?” might not have a clear answer; it might not be by any personal achievement that one is spared a suffering from which one’s neighbor is not. There might not be a clear reason.

The border between suffering and fortune, between lived lives gets thin; why am I not the man selling random items on the street? Could I, one day, become him? How? What circumstances may lead up to it?

It is hard to leave any question unanswered. With the border this thin I feel like wanting to thank someone, something. Wanting to show appreciation to luck or fate or a god who has orchestrated for everything makes perfect sense when I see it like this. When one knows one’s place as that of someone small and powerless, not protected by rights and solid infrastructures to better one’s odds, it makes sense to thank the flows and circumstances for being kind.

I think it is very human to reason and to find reasons; rather than believing in dumb luck and blind coincidence it just makes more sense to see events as linked and orchestrated by some greater power; by fate, by gods, by the universe. Lives make sense in stories. It is the same reasoning we’re using when we refer to historical events for current circumstances; chains, links, explanations. A sense of a bigger power, so we can praise and thank the power for the good it gives us and curse it for the bad. No matter what name we give it.

So what is luck, really? When I ask my friend Hassan, the truck driver, if Moroccans have any superstitions or any rituals they would do for luck, he waves his finger and points to the sky.

“No luck. Only Allah.”

“Luck” is just one of the names or explanations given to the un-nameable and un-explainable flows of circumstances. In some places people try to control some of these flows, in other places they don’t or they can’t. Culture grows around it and tries to fill in the gaps with names and explanations.

When I look at my life right now I see privilege and I see grace. And I find myself thanking; thanking luck, thanking fate, thanking my ancestors, my dead grandmother for keeping an eye on me, thanking the flows that have been kind to me, asking them to keep on being kind to me and accepting all the while that they might not be. Trying to be humble for the whims of life and grateful for everything that has been up until now, just because this mindset feels better to me than being oblivious or anxious. Who knows what life may bring me? If it is all dumb luck and circumstances piled haphazardly onto each other, or if it is already written in neat letters. I am sure that even the man selling random items on the street has a lot to thank for, so the day when I may become him I will, too.

…

(This story told in pictures.)