MARCH 8 — I have a friend (a Malaysian) who met his Korean wife while waiting for a bus in Singapore.
He was going home after work and was at the same bus stop as this Korean woman; they chatted, agreed to meet up again and, voila, 20 years later they’re married with two kids and living in London.
Chances are, if they both didn’t happen to be at that bus stop at the same time (or if there were too many people there for the two of them to get acquainted), their lives could have taken very different turns.
This is the theme of the book published this January by Brian Klaas called Fluke: Chance, Chaos and Why Everything We Do Matters (Scribner, 2024) which argues that reality consists mainly of unpredictable events, random chance occurrences and the like i.e. flukes.
Klaas invites us to think of every major event in our lives plus many ones we know about and consider the likelihood that things may NOT have gone the way they had gone if not for small things happening without our knowledge, let alone influence.
For example, in the very first chapter, Klaas notes that the reason Nagasaki was bombed instead of Kyoto (which was originally on the Americans’ plans) was because the Secretary of War had stayed in Kyoto for his honeymoon and didn’t want the city destroyed.
Thousands of lives pivoted on one couple staying at a certain hotel in a certain city after their wedding.
Or consider the many wannabe dotcom millionaires, 99 per cent of whom fail and end up living mediocre lives but only a handful of whom become Musks or Zuckerbergs.
Usually the reason someone succeeds while another doesn’t has less to do with the individual's talent and more to do with a lot of luck. E.g., imagine if Musk’s early venture with PayPal had bombed or if that last fateful Space X launch had exploded — would he still be who he is today?
Even Napoleon Bonaparte was supremely lucky in his early years when a cannonball landed only a few feet away from him; a bit nearer and the many Napoleonic wars wouldn’t have occurred, thousands of French soldiers needn’t have died needlessly in the Russian winter, the Battle of Waterloo may never have been fought and so on.
Humility via flukes
There are many reasons to receive Klaas’ book positively, but I’ll discuss only a few.
For starters the idea that flukes surround our lives is nothing if not humbling with regards to our achievements, talents and so on.
Embracing the idea that flukes have been instrumental in getting us the success we’ve gotten so far effectively reminds us that things could’ve been different and may still be.
The reason Sharon has, say, a five-figure salary isn’t only because of her hard work and tenacity; it could also be because a more aggressive potential colleague (who could’ve easily triumphed) failed to pass his interview because the HR interviewer happened to be a Liverpool fan whose team lost the previous night and so was in a bad mood.
Or, the reason why Adrian has such a wonderful career in Hong Kong is because of his partnership with Michael, a co-worker who happened to bring him along on his regional projects; and this friendship which may have been stillborn if Michael hadn’t broken up with his girlfriend a few years ago, spurring him to take some time off and help out in church where, during one Easter Sunday, he bumped... into Adrian.
At the very least, Klaas’ thesis should help us keep in check the very human tendency to ascribe our success to our strengths and our failures to luck or other people. It may very well be (and probably is) the other way round most of the time.
Also, the understanding that every small thing may matter should make us less willing to dismiss people or events or organisations we consider insignificant or inconsequential.
Every person and their actions matter.
*This is the personal opinion of the columnist.
