Last Updated on June 23, 2022 by James Dziezynski
Please don’t be scared off by the fact this blog entry starts off by referencing a 22-year-old video game about Feudal Japan. You need not have a love of the NES nor working knowledge of the Tokugawa Era of Japanese history to appreciate the sentiment.
The game I speak of is the strategy-themed Nobunaga’s Ambition. You assume the role of a warlord (or Daimyo in Japanese parlance) tasked with uniting the country during a period of civil unrest. There are 49 other warlords competing to become the ruler of Japan. Once you’ve chosen your respective Daimyo, you are given a chance to determine their attributes on a scale from 59 -109, with higher being better. Unlike real life, you can roll over as much as you want until you are dialed in with the best possible starting numbers.
As you can see there are five categories: Health, Drive, Luck, Charisma and IQ. Due to the limitations of 1980s programming, the only three stats that seem to really make much of a difference in the game are health, luck, and charisma. Drive and intelligence play secondary roles in determining the effectiveness of your leaders. These are the “hardwired” stats your Daimyo begins with. Any fluctuations in these traits happen slowly over time and some, like charisma, are painfully difficult to improve if you start off with a low number.
Fate is Just the Weight of Circumstances
Now, let’s get back to reality. All of us were given a similar “roll” when we were born, though as far as I can tell we didn’t get any do-overs. We roll on a much more diverse spectrum of categories than our video game counterparts. For example, I scored quite low on “Quality Singing Voice” but did pretty good on “Better Than 20/20 Vision”. I’d be hard-pressed to equate the five game categories into my own life. I’d say I’ve had good health, luck, and IQ. At times, my drive is pretty strong depending on the task though it’s prone to nosedive if I’m not vigilant. I’m probably a bit below average with charisma, mostly because I can’t tell a joke and all my pop-culture references revolve around old video games or Homestar Runner cartoons.
Every person you encounter has their own rolled stats. From those base numbers, it’s our choice to improve, ignore or be content with what we’ve been given. I think about some of my friends who have had to work incredibly hard for their personal victories. The complex network of circumstances dealt with us is an ancient source of fascination and one of the favorite forums for philosophers, theologians, and scientists. Our advantage comes by having an awareness of our “stats” and the wisdom to know what we can and cannot improve. In most categories, we have some control over our “score”… but what about luck?
Luck is a beautiful thing. It keeps me leaning slightly more towards agnosticism than atheism. Luck is partially intangible. Luck also seems influenced by a positive mindset, hard work, and the ability to see opportunity. I’ve always considered myself a fairly lucky person, a little bit because of the objective realities of my life but also because I tend to “think lucky”. It’s not that I assume I’m entitled to good fortune rather, I find that a lot of things out of my immediate control seem to go better if I assume they will. It’s either completely naive or brilliant but either way, it’s more sophisticated than the clumsy ideology of positive thinking presented in such pop-culture treatises like The Secret.
Feeling Lucky?
Getting back to our gaming metaphor, I think our “luck score” is not so much how lucky we will actually be but how tuned in we are to thinking lucky. Added to that is the respectful notion that luck is never going to be fully accountable for our success and failure, it merely illuminates possibility. Maybe luck is on par with karma or other misunderstood but thoroughly believed spiritual concepts. If you want to be luckier, there’s nothing wrong with thinking lucky thoughts.
If we had the chance, it would be folly not to roll the highest possible scores for ourselves. To modify the oft-mentioned Bill Parcells’ quote, “We are what our stats say we are!” Good. Be aware of them. And for those things you can change, if you are driven to do so, take heart. We might not have rolled high out of the box but thank goodness for hard work and the occasional spark of luck. It keeps life interesting.
