belonging – The Posted Past

Edwardian postcards had a curious set of symbols to call forth fate and fortune. Horseshoes, shamrocks, roses, and playing cards. Small and slightly worn at the edges, these vintage greeting postcards have traveled more than a century carrying a providential wish.

Only one card in the collection actually says Good Luck. The rest offer best wishes, happy hours, and kind thoughts from me to you. As we’ll see, luck is borne of relationships (and circumstances) lifted by the charitable wish for health, wealth, and wisdom.

Some say that luck can be earned, but only a fool pursues it outright. We daydream about what fortunes may be in store, and sometimes ignore the simple sparkles that appear each day. We know, of course, that there are no free lunches. Yet, we are admonished to never look a gift horse in the mouth.

The bold assume they earned their lucky breaks. The humble suspect they’ve borrowed fortune temporarily. The superstitious are not entirely sure we should discuss it. Luck is where fate and intent find common cause, usually in the context of close friendships.

Old English had no luck. It used wyrd instead, which pointed to fate and destiny. Wyrd is the root of our word weird, which may indicate how people felt about fate. It was uncanny, inevitable, and perhaps divine. You didn’t pursue wyrd. You experienced it through awe and fear.

Somewhere around the 15th century, luk and gelucke drifted in from the Dutch and Low German. Luck was looser and more manual. Like weather, luck favored preparation and was possible to influence if you knew the right charms. The horseshoe went up above the door. The rock went in your pocket. If luck is not fate, if it is not fixed in advance, then perhaps you can do something about it. Perhaps it can be courted.

The lucky person is not the one who waits but the one who steps into the room. This is luck as a reward for courage, or at least for motion. Fate deals the cards, and we each have a hand to play.

Fortune favors the bold — fortes fortuna adiuvat
~ Terence, Roman playwright, around 151 BCE

Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity, and preparation is something you control. The solo pursuit of fortune is a genuine drive.

The harder I work, the luckier I get.
~ Samuel Goldwyn

But the shamrock gently disagrees. Four-leaf clovers are natural anomalies, not personal achievements. We can’t earn one, only discover it. Even if you can court luck, even if work and boldness can pull it toward you, it is never yours to fully command.

Luck never gives; it only lends.
~ Swedish proverb

Some people simply have it, inexplicably, in ways that have nothing to do with preparation or boldness or a rabbit’s foot.

Throw a lucky man into the sea, and he will come up with a fish in his mouth.
~ Arabic proverb

Some observe that luck is a finite resource and can be unwisely traded away. This may or may not be true, but as a matter of human priority it is clarifying. We each get chances to test our luck.

Lucky at cards, unlucky in love.
~ English proverb

The tension between fate and will, between earned luck and divine luck, is located in a moment of commitment. The lucky day is not the day something falls in your favor. It is the day you decide it might be worth the effort.

The day you decide to do it is your lucky day.
~ Japanese proverb

Whatever the senders intended and however the recipients replied, these cards demonstrate how providential language holds us together in anticipation of something wonderful just ahead. The possibility that things might go our way.

The symbols of luck nested together in relationship, in abundance, in the living world — a horseshoe wreathed in flowers, overflowing with roses, or flanked by shamrocks — is not an accident of Victorian design sensibility. It draws on the ancient wisdom that friends are the true source of life’s lucky breaks. Love does the work and luck gets the credit.

Before we go, there is a word worth saying about silences and the quiet costs of delayed connections, and those missed entirely.

In May 2023, the Surgeon General issued an advisory that stopped me mid-scroll. Loneliness had reached epidemic levels in the United States. He was not describing the usual suspects—a widower, a loner, someone at the edge of class or condition. I had to admit, his warning rang a bell in my own heart. I was among a growing contingent of the ordinary, ambient, alarmingly average lonely. As a caregiver, days passed without anyone really seeing me, or me really wanting to be noticed.

The Surgeon General called it a public health crisis. He compared its effects on mortality to smoking fifteen cigarettes a day. Actual harm done.

Indeed, social isolation raises the risk of heart disease, stroke, dementia, and early death. The health research is not soft or sentimental. The body registers being unseen the same way it registers physical pain — same neural pathways, same hormonal alarm signals, same disrupted sleep, same compounding risks. We are living inside a paradox: more connected by technology than any humans in history, and perhaps lonelier than our ancestors.

In the golden age of the postcard — roughly 1900 to 1920 — Americans sent billions of them. A trip to the lake. A hello from the city. A heart, a name, a single line of longing, on full view to the mail carrier and anyone else who handled it along the way. The medium demanded brevity, levity, and a light touch.

That simple approach is worth noticing, because we tend to use the absence of time as our primary excuse for not reaching out. We sense there isn’t room in the average difficult day for a real conversation. So we wait. And the time doesn’t come. And the silence grows.

A postcard is a signal, not a report. It says: I haven’t forgotten. A brief message can make a big point. At times, the whispered delivery bears the full meaning.

The research on what makes people feel less alone points not to the depth of connection in any given moment, but to its consistency. There is comfort in the reliable sense that someone, somewhere, is holding you in mind. A brief, warm gesture, repeated, does more for that feeling than an overwrought or inconsistent one.

Simple gestures are not consolation prizes. They are the architecture of belonging.

Sadly true, is often easier to extend kindness to a stranger than to sustain the loving glow among the people you know best. A stranger on a difficult day can receive warmth without a complicated history. They don’t owe you a response and you likely won’t know how the gift was felt. You haven’t let them down in the small accumulated ways that life’s closeness allows.

The people we love most are the ones we are most likely to let drift or actively ignore. A peculiar paralysis comes with the familiar foibles, caring deeply, and feeling the gap widen.

So here is a gentle nudge, the week after the holiday, when the pressure is off and the expectations are low. Not because it’s February. Because it’s Wednesday, and someone who loves you needs to know. A postcard or a hug, a humble tug on the sleeve or a quiet walk. None of it asks or offers too much. A simple, “We are ok,” can be enough.