Monday, December 28, 2015

Coin Flips

Shall I remind you again how awesome my Salvation Army is? I found this dress on sale there a couple weeks ago:


Next year’s theme is a Rio-style Carnaval, and my local Salvation Army delivers to me – on sale, even! – a blue and yellow satin dress that looks like it fell out of Carmen Miranda’s closet. Seriously, what were the odds of that happening?

It’s not a completely random thing, finding this dress: this particular store has a reputation for unexpected treasures, and I try to make it a habit to visit once a week or so. But finds like these (see also: Excalibur and Shannon) have made me think a great deal about the difference between chance and luck.

Chance is the outcome of the coin flip: absent any external or interfering factors (like the wind, or a weighted coin) it is completely random.

Luck is what you can make of those coin flips.

Luck can be changed: time or perspective can later reveal a bad flip good, a good flip bad, or inconsequential in the grand scheme of things. But sometimes chance deals us blows – one big one, or series of small ones – that are devastating in ways a little positive thinking can’t completely overcome.

Chance is far more difficult to change. While coin flips do even out over the long run, in the short run you’re going to have runs of very fortunate flips, and runs of very bad ones. Unless you’re a Jedi (unlikely) you can’t change those coin flips, regardless of how or what you think about them.

I spent way too much time over the weekend persuading myself not to participate in this week’s “Collector Appreciation Weekend”. The text of the e-mail suggested that a different set of freebies will be available, and the Roan AQHA Horses appear to be sold out on the web site, hence my indecision.

In the end I didn’t do it, mostly because I hated having completely random chance trying to dictate my happiness. I’ll buy the models I want to buy now because I like them and want them, and not worry about the “friends” they might bring with them.

If I can get a few other things worked out on Tuesday, I might take Reeves up on that discount-plus-free-shipping thing. I’ve been lingering over the new Deer Family release every time I’ve seen one in my travels…

As far as the dress goes, I don’t know if I am going to participate in the costume contest, but at some point during the festivities, I am going to wear it.

(When I showed it to Mom, her first reaction was “You’re wearing that to BreyerFest next year, aren’t you?” Sometimes it’s like she knows me!)

It’ll make me happy, it might make other people happy. I have to keep reminding myself that that should be the end of the discussion.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Hi! This is a completely random question, but do you happen to have a list of Flagship special horses? I'm trying to work out who I am missing....failing that, do you happen to know if Lionheart was the first and how many releases there have been each year? Thanks :)