Lucky

"Old vices, the same fears, and the new frustrations. Then, one discovers the other's meanness and anger at one's impotence. It is a sad human reality. A furious truth in which, if you are lucky, it is something far away. But explaining the chance of finding the benefit of that luck is complicated. By doing so, it stops being lucky. The need for revenge guarantees the submission of those humans who simply do not transcend. That arrogance in mediocre spaces, since simply if his name is remembered, it is to associate it with the worst of a person. Some are fortunate to be shielded from them, but others are not. And then frustration feeds, avoiding any possibility of growth. He felt annoyance and anger at meeting him at that airport. Of all the men they could meet, he had to be his wife's ex-lover. The love of his life, well, one of those that he would never get over despite his children. She does not. She smiled. She loved seeing him and making her husband feel in person what she felt every time she remembered the times he, she, had given him women lovers. It was raining. The two were there waiting. As always, the trip was over, and she had paid for everything. He, as always, took advantage of that. But that was what she chose without loving him. Hoping for a bit of luck. She always saw herself as a lucky woman.

But only some things can be left to chance. Decisions are not a matter of fate or others making them, despite their power, despite his supposed human mandate (never divine). A human who takes advantage of a position to simply, in his mediocrity, trap those who seek the emancipation of all and subject them to his yoke, which is so momentary, poor, and superficial that it only contributes to stillness. Some lucky humans can leave when they meet these characters. Others are brave humans who defeat them and advance with everyone. He had aged in a day, which he had not done in all these years. After that trip, she couldn't sleep. Half his back hurt since that argument and humiliation. The same thing that was necessary to be able to wish with all his soul to leave and, yes, start doing it. He looked in the mirror, and in those months, he saw how that little character triumphed over him. He didn't want that to happen anymore. And that afternoon, he decided. It was time to say goodbye. And in general, everyone wanted him to leave. Nobody would fight for him, despite all the fights he did for them.

What is a lucky person? Fortune is that in which the adaptation is not so traumatic and the decisions made by others are sufficient so that the current ones do not have dire consequences for oneself.  Perhaps it is not about fortune but rather about having enough knowledge and strength to overcome chance for one's benefit. Whatever that benefit was.  However, luck is simply a mix of what others decide and what one hopes for oneself.  The walk from the airport to the casino became shorter than the first time. And like the first time, I started that night with a drink of Rum, at thirty-nine degrees (or a little higher) on a night with a crescent moon that no one notices in that desert and in that place full of lights. Anthony was simply watching him in the rearview mirror. He was not a gambler. He didn't look like a worker despite his Latino face. He was not a millionaire who was up to something, and although he could be a hitman, no one could say that he was a random person, that he simply did not believe in any destiny. What is he doing then in a place like this? Not even he knew it himself. Neither does Anthony. He did not remember why and how he had decided to become a limo driver, and he did not notice that he had already been doing something for ten years that he did not choose.

Luck is the consequence of a chain of coincidences sought to be explained by supernatural forces, like someone's decision, that omnipresent other. But the matter is not so esoteric most of the time. Sometimes, the chain is understood, and the chaos can be modeled enough to forecast and profit from chance. So, does it stop being so? Knowledge and intuition are not a matter of luck (at all). With all its links, the chain builds the plot for all the luck stories. I want to leave. I want to leave. I want to leave. She repeated it so much as if it were a prayer or a spell strong enough to call upon all chance and give her what would allow her to leave triumphant. She had every right and every reason not to stay there. If the fortune had made her a man - it was said - she would have already left. But the truth is that in that country, men and women wanted what belonged to others. It was a way to control them. A way to keep them locked. Making them believe they are lucky."