Luck: A Question of Perspective, 2021

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Talking about luck is not an easy task these days. We all see and experience the consequences of the global crisis that has left us living in a state of emergency since last year. But above all, we got to feel them. 

Unlike the global crises we have experienced before — from financial to migration and climate crisis — the pandemic affects all of us. Truly, globally and simultaneously. We feel it, and that may be exceptional.

 

Kim Stanley Robinson writes: “9/11 was a single day, and everyone felt the shock of it, but our daily habits didn‘t shift, except at airports; the President even urged us to keep shopping. This crisis is different. It‘s a biological threat, and it‘s global. Everyone has to change together to deal with it. That‘s really history.“ 

 

Which let us may wonder, what do we learn and take from this collective moment? Globally and locally. In this place and moment. Although we are better off than people elsewhere, we still can feel what moves the world. 

 

Because in this moment, the outside view — the status and image that is projected onto us and that we are living in — becomes relative. Luck is found in the little things. 

 

So, take the chance for a different perspective, and pass on a lucky message. Fortune cookies were once used for sending messages to one-another. Their origin and history are unclear: From Japan to the USA where the fortune cookie as we know it today, originated about 100 years ago. During the crisis of the 1920s. 

 

And although the messages have changed over the course of history, one thing remains the same: we feel happy about the small messages that wish, foresee and promise us luck in our everyday lives. Perhaps even more so today than a year ago. Whether in Prenzlauer Berg or elsewhere. 

 

Take a cookie and pass on a lucky message.

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-Olaf Grawert and Gábor Kocsis