The fickle finger of fate

Since we're talking about luck. It's a good question. How do the good things happen, and how do the bad? In Woody Allen's Melinda and Melinda, the character of Melinda plays out a tragic or comic story, depending on whether it is Larry Pine or Wallace Shawn spinning her tale. Melinda and her life are, of course, not real - but how much of life is or feels real, anyway? And how many times do we feel - when we look at the coincidences in life, the choices we made, the paths we followed - that we really are playing out some great, pre-written text?

Haven't we all, at some point, considered alternative fates? If we hadn't met a particular person? If we hadn't attended a certain party? If our story was being narrated by Pine or Shawn (Melinda and Melinda)? If we had caught the train (Sliding Doors)? If we hadn't gotten ourselves engaged to someone we didn't love who then gave us the book "Love in the Time of Cholera" (Serendipity; one of the worst movies ever with John Cusack in it)? If we weren't trying to rather self-consciously demonstrate postmodern narrative artifice (Run Lola Run)? Etc, etc.

Me, ok. Me, I believe in good ol' simple karma. The process of what goes around comes around, the exact mechanics of which I'm a little hazy, but are no doubt handled skilfully by what I've always called Larger Forces. I have no scientific proof for this, of course - for all I know, life and fate might really be as casual as Larry Pine and Wallace Shawn coolly spinning out people's lives and stories over dinner. After all, some of the best things in my life have come about by the chanciest, dicey-est, unlikeliest encounters......