I
had a birthday this week, meaning a part of the way I define myself has
changed. I am no longer 25, but 26,
which one of my friends pointed out in mock horror is now my late
twenties. Gasp! I don’t mind, however. For one thing, I don’t ever want to be afraid
of aging. The way I see it, making it
this far in a crazy world is something I can be proud of. For another, 26 is my lucky number, so I have
high hopes for this coming year.
I’ve
told a few people this, and they’re usually surprised. Apparently 26 is a strange number to consider
lucky. This in turn surprised me,
because I was unaware that there are standards that judge the luckiness of
numbers. Isn’t it a decision based on
personal observation? For example, my
father’s lucky number is 5, because he was born in 1955. Mine is 26 because I was rookie number 26 in
marching band years ago, and it’s stuck with me.
But
I’m willing to play along. What makes a
number lucky? I googled it, and most of
the results involved number games—“add up the numbers in your birthdate to get
your lucky number”. Well, I tried it,
minus the zeroes: 7 + 1 + 1 + 9 + 9 is 27, and 2 + 7 is 9. Okay.
As far as I can tell, though, 9 hasn’t ever done me any good. I tried a second generator which asked me to
put in a set of numbers, from which the lucky number would be chosen based on
my first name and my birth date. I gave
the generator 2, 6, 8, 12, 13, 14, 16, 26, 48, and 52. Guess what it gave me? 26. Of
course, it may be biased, because all of my choices were somehow derived from
26 to begin with. Still, isn’t it
interesting that it picked the one that I was going for?
Then
I polled Facebook to see what others had to say. Three different friends told me their choices
were arbitrary, while several others had choices based on their birthdays. One friend chose 9 because she liked the
shape of it; another picked 3 because it groups well. Everyone seems to make different associations
with certain numbers and gravitate towards the positive associations.
Of
course, there are certain associations that we share. The first number to spring to mind when we
ask about lucky numbers is 7. Makes
sense—7 days in a week, 7 seas, 7 continents, 007. As a fantasy writer, I can tell you that that
genre loves 7: the 7th son of a 7th son is always imbued
with magic, not to mention the 7 dwarves.
What makes 7 so special? Coming
from my own Judeo-Christian education, I remember once being told that
traditionally, biblical scholar associated 7 with perfection, as 3 was heavenly
(the holy Trinity) while 4 represented earth (4 corners, right?). Maybe that has something to do with it. (There’s an article about 7 here which offers
a few more theories). Conversely, 6 is
considered unlucky in the same tradition—almost perfect, but not quite. I remember when I was a kid being told that I
couldn’t have 6 as my favorite number because it was the devil’s number—666. Maybe the inclusion of a 6 in my current favorite
is a kind of perverseness. Finally,
there’s that most famous of the unlucky numbers, 13, which has its own word to
describe the fear of it—triskaidekaphobia.
Try spelling that without spell check, I dare you. What’s wrong with 13? Is it because Death is the 13th
card in the Tarot deck, or because Judas was the 13th apostle? Does it have to do with knights Templar, or can
we just credit it with 13 not being 12—again, almost perfect, but not
quite? Probably all of these things have
contributed to it. (And it hasn’t
escaped my notice that 26 is two 13s. I
continue to be perverse even without realizing it. For more about 13, check this out.)
In
the end, what does luck really mean? I
think luck comes from the energy that we put into it. We associate certain things with certain
numbers, and so we notice more when those associations turn out to be
true. Does that mean that luck is all in
our heads? Well, yes, but isn’t
everything else? It’s comforting to have
something to fall back on to help us make decisions. Humans are subjective thinkers; we can’t help
it. So we adopt favorites—numbers,
colors, songs, quotes—and use them to help guide us through this crazy
world. It makes the chaos of the many
choices before us a little bit easier to navigate.
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