How often do you feel unlucky? Are you someone who gleans luck from certain objects or a ritual? What is good luck and what is bad luck?
I’m not superstitious, and definitely don’t consider myself lucky. I spend my days acknowledging how blessed my life is, but when it comes to pure dumb luck I never think of myself as being on the right side of it.
Every year, when I analyze our annual statistics poster, I can’t help but think about how much luck plays into this industry. Did you get the right amount of moisture at the right time? Did you need to make any insurance claims? Did any of your equipment need to be replaced unexpectedly?
Maybe you carry around a lucky rabbit’s foot and all of these things worked in your favor, or maybe you just got lucky and had a great year; either way, the numbers do not and will never reflect any of that. It’s easy to look at prices and amounts that we report in Progressive Forage as a measuring stick for luck, and while they are there for your knowledge and consideration, the numbers are the result and don’t show anything about the story of how they arose.
There is an old Chinese fable about luck that uses a farmer as the main character, and I do believe it is the most fitting profession for an example of how luck can be determined.
The fable takes the farmer through many examples of things that can be viewed as both good and bad luck simultaneously. The farmer loses his horse right before planting season (bad luck), but it returns the next day with several other wild horses (good luck). His son breaks his leg working with the wild horses (bad luck), but the bum leg prevents him from being enlisted in the war (good luck).
In my mind, “luck” is really more optimism; do you see yourself as lucky or unlucky? Do you try to find a correlation behind things that happen to you?
When you look at the numbers presented this month and every month, take an optimistic perspective of where you stand. The rankings and numbers aren’t meant to assign value to the work you do, or to make you feel unlucky. Be like the farmer who saw both sides of the event, and realize there is a flip side to every event that takes place.
No matter how lucky or unlucky you feel, I hope you find our information useful, and look at the statistics poster to get the numbers, but I hope you find the articles help you tell the story behind those numbers.
