The other day something came to mind that I hadn’t remembered for many years. My first job after graduating from college was teaching at a middle school. One of my students was expressing frustration with another student who had called herself “lucky” because something positive had happened to her. The student who was frustrated told the other student that people are not lucky when positive things happen, but instead they are blessed; that God causes good things to happen and those good things are blessings. The first student argued that it didn’t matter which word she used and she would use the word she wanted to. It was hard for the frustrated student to let it go. She felt so strongly about it she kept trying to convince the other student to change her way of thinking.
Remembering witnessing this interaction between the students reminds me of how each of us is on our own journey. And along the way each of us has been and continues to be influenced by other people and experiences. I remember the student who felt adamant about using the word blessed rather than lucky had parents who talked openly about their religious faith. It’s likely that her parents emphasized to her and her siblings the difference between being blessed and being lucky and naturally she was influenced by them. Some people would say it’s semantics. Some people would say when they say lucky, they believe luck is a gift from God. Some people would say they don’t believe in a higher power but they have times when they feel lucky. And so on.
We’re all on our journeys. What matters is that we change and grow along the way.