I’d like to talk to you about fate and luck, although where one ends and the other begins is not too clear to me. I’ll begin with a few quotes about fate (or maybe luck) …quotes by people a bit smarter.
“Once you make a decision, the Universe conspires to make it happen.”
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
“There’s nowhere you can be that isn’t where you’re meant to be.”
– John Lennon
And my favorite:
“Fate is like a strange, unpopular restaurant filled with odd little waiters who bring you things you never asked for and don’t always like.”
– Lemony Snicket
There you have it – Everybody beats around the bush, so I will also not try to separate fate from luck.
I cannot deny it – I have achieved more than I ever dreamed and have been rewarded excessively. I know that I have had a hand in my “luck,” working hard to achieve whatever one may measure and call my life, but fate has played a huge part. (I use luck and fate interchangeably here). I worked hard, yes, and with that edge generously donated by luck (or fate) I’ve made it this far. All in all, I’m pretty well satisfied. I have been known to swear that the only item left on my “Bucket List” is this: Die broke and owe the undertaker.
When someone talks about a minor achievement of mine, I say, half jokingly, that I was lucky at the start, and then I will usually try to make a joke and quickly leave the subject. I might say, “It’s just that you didn’t have my advantages. I was born to a sixteen year old Mother into a sharecropper family in the deep, rural, south in the middle of the Great Depression!”
Funny thing about that statement is that I believe it to be true, that the circumstances of birth have been a good thing for my life as a whole, and that I was lucky in that way.
At least I call it luck as I reflect and muse and perhaps reason that some things were “just meant to be!” I know also that countless other people have had helpful roles in my life, appearing at the precise moment needed in order for me to continue my streak of “luck.”
For example, If we are speaking of how we and our significant others happened to meet or of how we came to be trained experts in, ” The Science of Interplanetary Travel,” we may decide to sit back smugly and say, “I did it.” But, if we are honest, we accept that luck or fate and the assistance of others all worked together to bring about our good or bad fortune.
We experience our luck or we experience our Karma… or whatever we call our situation at the moment. We may curse our luck or thank Heaven for our luck without saying anything aloud. I happen to be the kind of guy who says, once in a while, “I am sure one lucky so and so!”
I have to remind myself that it is infectious to spend a lot of time reflecting upon my family and about the billions of things that had to happen to bring me into the planet’s happenings (Don’t get me started!) and to insure continuation of the Brady strain through my participation.
Just a few days ago, I was observing the unlimited energy and beauty of my Great Grandson Connor John Cameron. I may have been speaking aloud as several in my family were nearby; I can’t remember for sure. It was something like, “How amazing that Connor John was born to US – to my Granddaughter, the daughter of my son, who was himself the grandson of” ….. and on and on. Why, Connor is my GREAT Grandson, although that does not represent a long period in our history.”
To keep the analogy I’m after, I have to continue: “ He is directly descended from MY Great Grandfather, Thomas Asa Brady, who was a young man who raced down town with his brothers to join the Confederacy for that noble adventure called the Civil War. It was easy from there to trace back through the generations, back to the arrival in the United States of Patrick and Nancy Brady from Ireland (That’s about how far I have researched.) in the 1700s.
I couldn’t help but think at that moment about the series of movements by fate – one could say luck – that had to occur in order for our perfect Connor John Cameron to be right here, this moment, filling our hearts and playing catch with his adoring kinfolk.
Another specific example of how fate intervened to shove me on my way to the present involves the tale of two soldiers whereby the fate of one was approved for advancing and the other was not.
In early 1950, toward the end of Basic Training, my good friend, Private MAJOR Poole (his first name made for lots of fun during Basic!) and I were the only two selected to attend PLS (Potential Leaders Schools) as our first assignments. He was assigned to the Infantry Leadership School at Fort Benning, Georgia, and I was assigned to Anti-Aircraft Artillery Leadership School at Fort Bliss, Texas. It could easily have been the other way around, as neither of us had by then acquired any military skills. It was just a matter of luck.
When the Korean War broke out a few months later, he was in the Second Infantry Division and I was in a self-propelled Antiaircraft Unit. Both organizations were alerted and quickly sent to Korea. I landed at Inchon and was attached to a US Marine Battalion through the south and into North Korea. Major’s Division landed just in time to be ordered to the far frozen north where his Regiment was overrun by massed Chinese forces. They suffered terrible losses, and he became Missing in Action. His fate is unknown to this day. My unit saw less action, never quite reaching as far north as Major’s Division. We were more safely escorted south by the Marines.
The Army simply sent one of us to infantry and the other to Antiaircraft Artillery assignments, and one was lucky.
Another example, although of lesser seriousness, explains how I came to spend six years with the Zuni People on the Zuni Pueblo in New Mexico. I can trace that intervening finger of fate to one particular moment when thick fog cleared and an airplane was allowed to land.
My last military assignment had been to Fort Ord, where I was temporarily the Deputy Director of Intelligence. I had little to do because I was retiring in a few months and my replacement arrived early, Aware of my interest, my commander encouraged me to enroll in the Teacher Education program at the Monterey Institute of International Studies in Monterey. I had been teaching at the US Army Intelligence School for three years before my terminal assignment, and planned to continue in education.
Almost on a whim, I explored a job offer to be Assistant Principal of the Saint Anthony Zuni Indian School on the Zuni Reservation. I decided to visit for an interview when the Franciscan Fathers sent me a ticket and asked me to come.
I found myself at the Monterey Peninsula Airport early one morning in the summer of 1974. The fog was so thick, I had trouble getting there, and when the plane to Los Angeles (first of three legs) arrived, it could not land. I waited, quite relieved that fate had intervened and I did not HAVE to go to rural New Mexico. After about 30 minutes, however, the fog cleared, the plane landed and I was on the way.
Almost immediately, I found that I liked the Franciscan Priests, liked the simple but adequate facilities and felt welcomed by the Zuni parents and teaching assistants. Next day, after a phone call home, I said yes. After two months, the newly hired, over-qualified Principal failed to relate well with the Zuni staff and parents, and I was asked to take over. I stayed six years, year to year, always because there was something major to accomplish for the Zuni and the Franciscan Fathers, and because the Zuni people somehow led me to believe I was the only one to get it done!
I have little doubt that fog cleared over Monterey Peninsula Airport because I was fated to become close to the Zuni People and to their kids at Saint Anthony Zuni Indian School. They all led me to believe that I was needed there, and could help. You are free to believe what you wish.
Over my many years, I have had lots of discussions on the subject of fate in meeting and keeping the ONE and only one woman that luck/fate/God/the Gods had meant for us to partner up with. I will explore my own case and see where luck and fate fit in (if they do).
I’ve just told about being in Korea early in the war, so I’ll continue from there. After the withdrawal from North Korea (I think my tank was the last vehicle taken aboard a ship at Hungnam Harbor on Christmas Eve, 1950. I have an Army photo showing my ship at the moment the docks were blown.
Later, in mid 1951, my unit reverted to anti-aircraft duties around our airfields. While in such a static state, I received my Purple Heart for a wound received in October 1950. I was by then a proud Corporal in charge of five others.
One day, three of us from my unit were called for an interview by recruiters for General MacArthur’s Honor Guard in Tokyo. (He had just been replaced by General Ridgeway.) They were looking for men who were six feet to six feet four, and slender and who had been awarded either a Combat Infantry Badge or a Purple Heart.
One week later, I was flying to Tokyo where I became a bona-fide Far East Command Honor Guard, given elaborate but tasteful uniforms and marched endlessly in special formations behind the FECOM Marching Band.
I was assigned to special guard duties, partly ceremonial, at the Dai Ichi Building, General Ridgeway’s Headquarters for the Far East Command. Others were assigned to the General’s residence (Quite Presidential, as it had been selected by General of the Army Douglas Mac Arthur).
I was soon promoted to Sergeant and given command of shifts of guards and relieved of the standing-frozen positions in front of the building and in front of sensitive areas inside.
One day while inspecting the guards, FATE placed me exactly between the street and the building at the very instant I spotted a very young lady dressed in white as she left a vehicle. I decided to race her to the door and open it for her, although
there were two imposing Honor Guards standing in front whose job was to salute perfectly, say Good Morning to officers and to open the doors for Civilians and all dignitaries. I got there first and opened the majestic door with the proper flourish.
The young lady was not impressed.
I began to watch for her and would open the door for her, but she was NEVER impressed. However, I did some research and discovered her name, and that she was a young civilian Intern for the Army’s team which was working on plans to bring military families over to be with their sponsers. The next time she arrived, I said smartly, “Good Morning, Miss Burnett.”
As I thought her mouth had moved ever so slightly, I interpreted our exchange as a “Maybe”
Later, as FATE would have it (and you knew it would), she forgot her mother’s admonitions and smiled at me and soon we were dating, mostly at the Military’s large Non-commissioned Officer’s club (the “Rocker Four”), because at the time, the military were not allowed to wear civilian clothing in Japan.
I could bore you with more details, but that December, after we had sent announcing telegrams to our respective families, Lee and I were married by (In sequence, to make it legal): the Army Chaplain, the Tokyo Prefecture and the US Consul General.
And if my luck holds, and fate does not intervene, we will be celebrating our 64th anniversary on December 8th of this lucky year – 2016.
Knotted
Here we were to be or
not to be knotted –
in bliss they say –
who silently waited
for one falter and
“I told you so” to follow.
But, fool them, did we
not…not telling them…
…we who wake up all
together days and
nights for two,
we who tied the knot,
all because we couldn’t,
but we did it anyway,
and we fooled them good,
did we not?
-Charles Brady
