Good Luck and Taking It One Day at a Time
So today is June 29th, 2021 and it is a very hot summer and I find myself sitting in a car dealership service center, waiting with other customers, for my car repair. My husband and I now lease cars rather than buy them. We felt that the lease cars under warranty replace the hundreds of dollars we were spending on service and car parts on cars we owned. We may have been wrong, but I am sure luck has something to do with this. I never had this particular problem with my other leased vehicles.
As I wait and try to relax, I think about the history archives I have been working on at the synagogue as a volunteer, reading articles from the late 1880's through today and the celebrations over the years. What we take for granted today were things of celebration back in those days. Our congregation went from no building and using someone's home for prayer and celebration, to raising money to build a small building, then eventually one bigger and then the biggest. Our Sisterhood membership began with men as leaders, 125 years ago, sewing burial shrouds for the Jewish funeral homes in town. Women took over after the first year or so and we have been going strong ever since, although we stopped sewing shrouds about a hundred years ago.
Longevity is a secret and no one really has the answer of how to live a long life. A relative who is turning ninety-nine years and seems perfectly healthy overall, has no reason or trick they used to live this nice long life. They attribute it to luck. I should add that religion was important to their lifestyle, although not necessarily overly religious, just regular. They did not have any particular weight issues although siblings did. The same with illness or cancer although it was in the family. When asked "What is your secret?", which they get asked a lot, the answer is always "luck".
Luck is about being ready, having a positive attitude and deciding the life you choose belongs to you. Others have put it in their own terms and you can read about it elsewhere but this may not be so easy for everyone. As we slowly ease out of this pandemic, personal anxiety is at an all time high. Fear of crowds and unwillingness to be around others, going back to normal activity pre-pandemic, or even travel and see relatives, has been vastly diminished.
On the other hand, this time can be viewed as an opportunity to make changes. This is where luck comes in. We can look at this time and feel sad and depressed or we can look at at it and view it as an opportunity for change. Things to do might be to make a new habit from something you used to do regularly. Try to improve your diet and overall health.
Get some regular sleep perhaps a goal of 6-7 hours per night. Begin an exercise program which includes strength training to build muscles that went soft when we were stuck in our homes. Try meditation, yoga or tai chai to calm the mind and create that positive outlook that will channel your good luck in the future. Try one or all and the course of your luck will change.
Finally, the young man said my car is ready...I happened to ask him as he walked by...that was good luck!
