Luck

The man in the hat walks through the city and feels a sense of community. You may not know him very well, most people don’t, but he’s there, hat resting on his head and umbrella sitting comfortably in his hand. As he goes about his day to day life he has an impact that is more than could be imagined by the people he comes across, those vague acquaintances who give him a smile or a polite nod then carry on their way. Small but good deeds are his doing. It makes him happy to leave a small trail of joy. That bus that turns up just as you get to the stop? That's him. The chance encounter with a friend you’d been meaning to catch up with? That’s his doing too. He makes small coincidences and fortunate timing seem like they happened for no reason, that’s a part of his skill, the casualness that makes you believe it’s just chance.

He likes to give out his good luck. It makes him feel much better than the other trail he leaves behind. There has to be balance, of course, but he'd prefer if he could deal only with the good. Sometimes he tries to hold the bad in, but that only makes it worse when it does come out, better to let it drip in small but cruel drops. He's the bus that you miss when you're running late, and the car that splashes water on you as it drives past on a cold winters evening. He’s also the responsible for that note you thought you had in your wallet but must have dropped. He doesn’t take the note, no nothing like that. You did drop it, he just helped it slip from your grasp.

He hasn't let the bad out for a while now. It's building, no, built up already and it needs to come out. Luck is like that sometimes, it can be come all at once. The man in the hat feels the bad luck coming and he can also feel the force of balance taking over. There’s a reason you don’t know the man in the hat very well, and trust me, you wouldn’t want to. No single person should have too much luck, and certainly not all at once. If you get the occasional pat on the back from him, well you also get the occasional trip. Most often the good outweighs the bad, luck isn’t a deciding factor, it’s a randomness that keeps life interesting.

But there’s one person who the man in the hat has touched more often than he knows he should. They’re almost what you would call friends, or the closest that the man in the hat has ever had to a friend. They got on right from the beginning, meeting when they were just young. The man with the hat was more helpful than he knows he should have been. The Friend has become successful, very successful by almost any measure. This success of course has been won mostly by his own hard work and skill. He’s amassed a fortune and has been living a full life. But along the way, growing up and through his early career, the Friend had much more help from the man in the hat that he should have done. The man in the hat has kept his distance in the more recent years, happy to watch the Friend from afar and try not to think about what he’s done for him.

Balance always takes over. It’s weight tips the scales slowly but it can’t be stopped. As the man in the hat leaves his café with a wave to the barista he heads towards the intersection at the end of the block. He see’s the Friend approaching in his sports car. The man with the hat, as often is the case, isn’t recognised, the car carries on through the set of lights. Somehow, the driver of the truck coming from his left doesn’t notice the red light. The driver doesn’t even slow down, if anything his foot gets a little heavier on the accelerator. Even at city speeds, the weight of the truck, plus the weight of the six Porsches stacked on top of it, plus the not insubstantial weight of the driver himself, all together they are too much of a force for the Friend and his little car. Physics takes over the situation efficiently, but far from cleanly. All of the Friend’s luck has come back to him at once. The man in the hat walks on, he’s more solemn than usual, he still smiles and waves at people he recognises or those who recognise him, but he doesn’t stop to chat. He doesn’t want them to get to know him, or he them. It’s much safer to keep a distance, friendly but not friends, yes, definitely safer that way.