I recently read an insightful article about what can be learned from regret. Before I started reading, I thought of past regrets and how they informed future actions: failing to respond to the cruelty on the bus, failing to confront racism, as a teacher teasing without malice but also without sensitivity. Each of those events taught me to be better next time. There have been next times to be better. Lucky.

There are the once-only times where I made a choice that stuck, the repeated events where I learned to make better choices, the examples that taught me how to move courageously and generously through my life, and the examples that showed me what not to do. In growing from those opportunities: lucky.

I could credit myself with avoiding the worst of the drug scene, the fraught romantic relationships, the dangling desires that might have lead me astray. I could say I turned away in time, credit myself for having better sense than others, boast of my foresight. The truth is mostly about luck.

Early on, I avoided the suicides, the false glamour of hunger and self-emulation, the waste of it. I made my mistake and learned and moved on. My life has been lucky that way: when I saw danger I mostly did not run toward it but found a way past.

My mother told a story about being handed a cigarette, coughing, and being told: “You’ll get used to it.” Why would she want to get used to that? And that was lucky for me because I wonder if I would ever have been able to overcome such a habit. My father smoked and it would one day kill him decades before his time. The stink of his cigarettes was never appealing—when is the smell of cigarettes not a filthy stink? I never once smoked a cigarette, knowing I didn’t like the smell or expense. It would have been the death of me. Lucky.

My father and mother both respected women, their minds and dreams. I was never ashamed or afraid of being who I was born. Lucky.

Friends gave me marijuana and mescaline. I dipped. I “experimented.” I was disappointed. Nothing very wonderful about those experiences because my imagination was better than being high. I noticed this. I respected my own skepticism. Lucky.

My future husband showed up and he was the most beautiful man, kind and smart and thoughtful of me. I grabbed with both hands. And though I feared and considered alternatives, I never strayed. I will never let go. Lucky.

It took me a year to become pregnant the first time but then I did, I never needed an abortion, and my babies were born healthy. My husband survived health issues and so have I. I found my profession almost by accident and by the good will of others. [Thank you, Hazel Koenig and Sister Flick.] The job I worked most of my adult life was wonderful, creative, rewarding. I doubted myself sometimes, doubted that I could work as hard as I did or carry my share, but I was born smart enough to do it, and I was taught to be determined enough to succeed. Lucky. Lucky. Lucky. Lucky.

I would like to take credit for my choices and my luck, but I think that would be a mistake. There will always be people with more money or less, people whose babies die before they are born, people who struggle with loneliness and homelessness and unemployment and deaths of people they love. People who plan and are disappointed. Those sorrows are not earned, they happen but are not deserved. Even stupid choices can be traced back to luck, to the lack of examples or training or experience or pure accident. I try not to dwell on regret unless it spurs me to behave better. I remind myself about luck.

Some people take credit for their luck. I had a student who believed his family’s wealth was something he had personally earned rather than something his parents had struggled to achieve. He belittled classmates who were poorer and less intelligent than himself. He failed to appreciate his luck. He failed to find compassion for those who did not have it. I have been lucky to understand this truth: Good or bad, we do not deserve our luck.

I think people with happy lives are mostly lucky. I also know people with very unfortunate lives who are happy nevertheless. I admire that ability to remain optimistic in the face of bad-bad luck. I don’t know if I could do that. [I do not want to find out.] I am not certain I have the generosity of spirit necessary to plod on past tragic circumstances others overcome. I can’t be certain. I have been lucky.