Friday, July 09, 2010

The Nature of Fortune


This isn’t an article about luck as such, but it’s writing was triggered by a piece of good fortune, the source of which I’m beginning to question. That questioning is the basis of my post.

I made a reasonably significant purchase on a website recently. Being the conscientious souls that they are, the website sent me a confirmation e-mail listing what I had ordered, how much it cost, and delivery and billing information. It’s a fairly standard procedure these days. In fact, it’s so standard that, as a matter of course, I barely glance at the e-mails these days.

On this occasion, however, and for reasons I’m still a little unsure of, I decided to thoroughly check the details of the order. Having done so, I realised that, in my hurry to get the process finished, I had wrongly specified the delivery address. As it happens, no harm was done, and the details were amended with a quick reply to the e-mail.

But what was it that made me check the details when normally I wouldn’t? It certainly wasn’t that I didn’t trust the company in question to get it right. It wasn’t that my attitudes have changed – I’ll probably move the next e-mail of it’s kind straight to the relevant folder with nothing more than a cursory glance of its contents. So, what was it?

I have a theory on this. I think it’s quite feasible that subconsciously, over the course of my night’s sleep, I realised that something, somewhere was wrong with what I’d done during the course of the evening. That triggered me to re-examine the products of that evening’s tasks, including the response to the online purchase. I scanned this e-mail not because I wanted to confirm that I had done things correctly, but rather because I was expecting to find something wrong.

How often do we attribute fortunate coincidences to sheer luck, when actually it’s our subconscious helping us out?

Just a theory…

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