If anything could happen, it might as well be something good. That’s one of my mottos.
In a chapter titled “Roll the Dice” in his book Creative Doing, my friend Herbert Lui transfers the idea to being creative: “If you’re ever experiencing blockage or a sense of stuckness on a decision, try opening the door to chance in order to support your creative work,” he writes.
Sometimes, a calculated gamble just might point you in the right direction, Herbert believes. Instead of continuing to stare at a wall, why not throw something at it? Flip the dictionary to any page, play with a random name generator, or toss some coins onto a table and start with whatever pattern they land in, Herbert suggests.
When it comes to work projects, you may want to ask someone on a completely different team for an outside perspective. Stuck on bad first dates? Go somewhere you’d never go. A violin concert, perhaps, or a pottery class. Even for your energy, a bit of entropy can help on occasion. Maybe staying up late for once will make you feel more energized, not less.
No matter the arena, the point remains: “If you want to make fewer decisions, enlist chance as an assistant,” Herbert says. Fortuna is a goddess, not a creature of the underworld, and for good reason: She wants to be on our side. Will we relinquish our stubbornness and let her? The right time only we can determine, but sooner or later, we should.
See chance as an ally, not an enemy. After all, if anything could happen, it might as well be something good.
