Only One Can Change

I’ve heard it said that four things don’t really exist: luck, fate, coincidence, and common sense. Now, I know what you’re thinking, you’ve been leaning on at least two of those your whole life. But hear me out, because it’s not as far-fetched as it sounds.

Luck? People like to dress it up as the reason they win the raffle or find a twenty-dollar bill in the grocery store parking lot. But the truth is, someone else lost that bill, and someone else bought those raffle tickets that didn’t win. It’s less about luck, more about timing and showing up.

Fate? That’s just a word we throw around when things happen that we can’t explain. A flat tire, a sudden meeting, or marrying the girl who borrowed your pencil in high school.

We like to think it was all scripted, but in reality, it’s just life unfolding. There’s no curtain call, no stage directions, just us stumbling along.

Coincidence? That’s the twin cousin of fate.

Running into an old friend at the airport or discovering that your new neighbor is your dentist’s brother-in-law may feel like a coincidence, but it can often seem more meaningful than that. But isn’t it proof that our world is smaller than we admit?

Now, common sense, ah, there’s the slippery one. Folks talk about it as if it’s a basic ingredient in human soup, like carrots or potatoes. Trouble is, everyone thinks they’ve got a big helping, but when the pot’s stirred, there’s not enough to go around. That’s because common sense isn’t common at all. It’s learned, practiced, sharpened, and sometimes ignored altogether.

Out of the four, it’s the only one we can change.

I’ll give you an example. The other day at the hardware store, a fellow was trying to wedge a brand-new barbecue grill into the back seat of his sedan. He pushed from one end, his wife pulled from the other, and the box was wedged tighter than a cork in a wine bottle. I walked up and said, “Friend, it’ll fit a whole lot easier in the trunk.” He looked at me, then at the trunk, then back at the grill. Finally, he chuckled and said, “Guess that’s common sense.”

But was it? Or was it just another set of eyes with a different angle? That’s the thing, we don’t come prepackaged with it. We build it, bit by bit, from mistakes, laughter, and the occasional neighbor pointing out the obvious.

If you’re waiting for luck to bail you out, you’ll wait a long time. If you’re leaning on fate, you’re just handing over your choices. And if you’re counting on coincidence, well, you’ll be standing around at airports hoping lightning strikes twice. But if you decide to add a little common sense to your toolkit, life shifts. Problems shrink, doors open, and sometimes, you even save a marriage from ending in a parking lot argument over a barbecue grill.

That’s why I say the other three don’t matter much. Luck, fate, and coincidence are just fancy names for things we can’t explain. Common sense, though, is that one’s alive, breathing, and ready to grow if we let it.

So the next time you hear someone say, “Well, that was lucky,” or “I guess it was fate,” or “What a coincidence,” smile politely. But know the truth: the only thing you can actually count on, and change, is your own measure of common sense. And if you’ve got just enough of that, you’ll find you don’t need the other three anyway.