Have you ever said that famous phrase about chance and luck?
You know the one when you hear about a big lottery jackpot going begging this week? Or that some downright gorgeous celebrity is single again and looking for a partner?
As soon as you hear about either you say the immortal words, ‘Chance would be a fine thing’. A kind of spell wishing it could happen to you because, well chances are, it won’t. Nor ever will.
Or will it???
Alistair from Bishopbriggs near Glasgow was elated to welcome his new baby and first child with his wife Sally-Anne on what was a very special day. It was special because that day was Christmas Day. And what made it even more super special was that the couple’s surname WAS Christmas. What are the chances of that? A baby for Mr and Mrs Christmas on Christmas Day itself?
Well, the odds of that happening were calculated at over 3 million to one and as such the story made the BBC national Christmas night news that evening in the UK in 1993.
That’s how chance works. It exists everywhere all the time but we are so focused on the odds of some random or amazing event even existing at all, we dismiss it as weird, a freak, or unrepeatable. Yet chance turns up again and again if you start looking for it.
Getting in the swing.
Fancy a round of golf? If you do, like most golfers you would dream of hitting a hole in one. The chances of that are around 12,500 to 1. Or in other terms, you would have to play every single day for over 34 years to be in with a chance of sinking one. The odds seem stacked against you. So just imagine being a pro and competing against the toughest courses and opponents each week.
Not a problem for English golfer Dale Whitnell who this February hit not just one, but two, hole in ones in the SAME round at The South African Open in Durban. He had never previously achieved a single hole in one in all his life until that point.
The combined odds of this feat according to the National Hole-In-One Registry? Wait for it! 67Million to One. And yet it happened. Chance would be a fine thing hey!!
Call it serendipity. Call it a fluke. Call it a stroke of luck. Call it the law of averages that it would happen one day. Call it what you like but the chances of anything happening increases because there are those who are prepared to believe and try. And that’s where most of ALL of the inventions ever created by humans on this planet from the motor car to the mobile phone to cures for disease have originated from.
Studies have shown that the calculated chance of landing a man on the Moon back in the early 60’s was a minute 0.0017%. Yet it was achieved in under a decade because President Kennedy believed it was possible. In turn NASA minds, previously convinced it could never be achieved, set about super thinking to make that belief come true. As you know, it sure did. And guess what? They even played golf up there!!!
Chances are, you see, that what we CAN do far outweighs anything we can’t. If you believe enough, and turn your mind to it, YOUR moon is in reach too. If you chance it, that is.
Then chance would be a very fine thing indeed!!