Thanksgiving 2023
Nieces, nephews, cousins. And to all of whom ears are able to hear my words as they are read. Its that time of year to where even if we don’t speak it out loud, we should at least take a moment to think it. I’m talking about all that we should be thankful for. I know I have to die in prison but yet, when I think about it, I am still so bless… I may sometimes cry, but I sometimes laugh. I may sometimes feel sad, but I sometimes smile. Most of my days are spent caged in a one man cell, but I still feel human. I may never get to live in the free world, but I (still live) in, “a world.” I was not sentence to death, I was sentence to life. So my life continues. When your able to mentally bounce back from life altering events, your vision becomes clearer to the beauties of life. And its not (where) you have to live your life, its (how) you live your life. And my words have the power to leave my world and enter your world. And I believe that my words are sometimes felt by at least one soul that lives in a world that is no longer my own. For that, I’m thankful. Happy Thanksgiving.
Luck Dice
By Juan Ortiz
We should reflect on how lucky we are. Our lives could have been quite different. Of course, you don’t have to travel very far to see bad luck. Violence, illness and homelessness occur all around us. It seems that a dice playing “divinity” rule our lives. Life and death, success and failure, are often simply matters of luck. Happiness and poverty hang on the roll of the cosmic dice. It is hard to understand why God allows some to thrive while others suffer. If we can’t distinguish the reason behind our fortunes or misfortunes, we might as well chalk it up to chance. Some might say to take to the open road to find our fortune. To get lucky, we do have to embrace opportunities when they arrive. But for some, the dice are loaded against us. The homeless wandering our streets remind us that fortune is hard to find on the open road. Hard work and determination cannot guarantee survival for unlucky children born into violence and poverty. These afflictions prey equally upon the smart and the stupid. We don’t choose where or when we are born. Nor do we choose our genetic endowment or cultural heritage. The most important facts of our biographies are entirely beyond our control and subject to the cosmic lottery. The existing philosophers coined the term “thrownness” to describe the human condition. We are thrown like dice into the world. We find ourselves in a world. We find ourselves in a place and time, in a body, and living a life that we did not create or choose. Each moment of our lives involves another throw of the dice. Our only power is in choosing how to react to the rolling dice. Morality and character appear in the way we navigate the winds of fortune. We can give up in despair and resign ourselves to fate. Or we can resolve to work hard, despite the odds. But at the end of the day, we don’t control the way the dice fall. Understanding the role of luck in life should make us more humble about our achievements and less ashamed of our defeats. Every great achievement contains an element of chance that calls pride into question. Seeing that every loss includes some bad luck can reduce feelings of blame or regret. The truth of luck is that it is always changing. It can be difficult to appreciate good luck when we are worried about losing it. But admitting the fragility of good fortune can lead us to savor the sweetness of success. And understanding that bad luck does not last forever can give us comfort while we wait for our fortunes to change. In the end, to understand luck is to develop compassion. The unlucky have usually done nothing to deserve their misfortune. Another roll of the dice and it could be you digging through the rubble, burying your beloved or fleeing poverty. Mercy, kindness and generosity are needed in a hard luck world where, it seems, the gods do play dice.
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