What's luck got to do with it?

This is a true story about a chance encounter. It’s about a girl I met the other day, while I was at traffic court.

Now, you and I both know you’re not supposed to talk in the courtroom, but I was sitting at the very back of the room, the girl sitting next to me was cute, and I couldn’t help myself. Very quietly, I asked her what she was there for. She was there for a moving violation. She explained how it happened and why she got the ticket. And then she asked me the same question. I explained that I was there with my daughter, who was there to pay a speeding ticket. We chatted.

At that moment, my daughter was sitting up front, awaiting her opportunity to speak with the judge. She (Morgan, my daughter) was hoping to get a reduced sentence. She had been speeding, but not outrageously. She was going 70 but slowing down as she approached a toll gate. The speed limit for that section of the freeway had just dropped to 50 mph, but the cop was not sympathetic. Morgan pleaded guilty, threw herself upon the mercy of the court, and asked for a reduced sentence because she was a poor college student. But like the cop, the judge wasn’t particularly sympathetic either. The judgment? $250. And would she like to pay it today?

You might say that Morgan was unlucky. And you might say that she was also unlucky later that day when she was involved in an accident while driving to Willits, a small town in Mendocino county, about 3 hours north of San Francisco.

Not me; I say she was lucky. Lucky, because she wasn’t hurt. No other cars were involved. The accident was minor. We’ll have to get her car fixed of course, and that’s going to cost some money. So perhaps Morgan was “fortunate” rather than lucky. It could have been a lot worse.

And what if the lesson she learned from the speeding ticket and the accident ultimately made her a better driver? Years later she may look back on an otherwise spotless driving record and think, Maybe I truly was lucky that day I went to traffic court.

And maybe my dad was lucky that day too, the day he met that girl. Maybe my ticket and my appearance at traffic court ultimately lead to the luckiest moment of my dad’s life.

Life is like that, isn’t it? Isn’t it totally random at times?

Think about how we meet our partners, our spouses, our boyfriends and girlfriends. Unless you’re in an arranged marriage (and even then, I would argue), we meet our significant others purely by chance. What were the odds that he would be the one to reach down and pick up the book that you dropped accidentally while flipping through the pages in the bookstore. It just happened to be his favorite novelist. What were the odds that she would be the one sitting next to you on the plane, both of you traveling on business trips scheduled at the last minute. It just happened you were going to the same destination, a place neither one of you had ever been to.

So you strike up a conversation. It leads to exchanging e-mail addresses. You make arrangements to meet for dinner. One date leads to another. You discover that you have met your soul mate.

Could you have guessed that would happen? Could you have predicted that chance encounter?

Let me pause here a moment and make a confession. I check my horoscope everyday. I bet you didn’t know that about me. Despite the fact that I think astrology is completely bogus, I’m fascinated by it. No, I’m addicted. I love to read my horoscope and try to find some way to connect it to my life, something that happened to me to confirm the truth of that day’s prediction.

Here’s my horoscope for the day my daughter had her traffic accident after spending the morning in traffic court. The day I went there with her to lend her my moral support. The day I met that girl sitting next to me at the back of the courtroom:

All you need to fulfill your next life goal -- the missing link, if you will -- is a person, and this person could be coming into your life today. If you are at work, look for someone who isn't new on the scene but has recently taken on a different role. They have some helpful information you need to hear. If you are at school, keep an eye out for that kid who always seems to have the answers. They have the answers for you, too. Strike up a conversation with this person and see where it goes.

No lie. That’s my exact horoscope, verbatim, on the day I went to traffic court with my daughter. Which leads to this inevitable question: Did my horoscope accurately predict the future?

That’s the thing about astrology: in a sense it’s the exact opposite of the chaos theory of life. Astrology suggests that distant stars and planets guide and influence our lives, much the way the shape and contours of land determine the course of a river. And thus it is that astrology can actually predict the events of our lives. If you believe in it.

But I don’t. I don’t see life that way. To me, life is wonderfully chaotic. That it’s unpredictable is what makes it so amazing. I like to think that our lives are like novels. And what is a novel but a long story that unfolds over many thousands of words. If it’s a good story, it surprises us at every turn. It’s unpredictable.

It’s only when we get to the end of the novel and look back that we can see the pattern. Yes, there was a logic in the steady march of events. There was a design in the steady development of the story. The river stayed predictably in its banks.

But wait a minute. Let’s be clear about this: That order you perceive is apparent only in retrospect, only from a distance. That is not how it feels when you’re in the middle of the story. Or the middle of your life. Can you predict absolutely what will happen in your life tomorrow, much less next month or next year? We never know. Things often seem to happen when they happen for reasons beyond your ability to comprehend. And luck -- good or bad -- most definitely plays a role. Luck has its day in court.

As luck would have it, I left the courtroom that day the way I had arrived. I was there for my daughter. We came together, we left together. Just the two of us. I met a girl while I was there. I talked with her for a while. But I never gave her my phone number. We didn’t exchange e-mail addresses. I don’t even know her name.

And in a week or so, I won’t even remember what she looked like.