The Quest for Good Luck

I have a story to tell.  A cautionary tale, if you will.  This is a story about luck.

My late wife was a constant practitioner of the art of feng shui.   In Chinese, the term “feng shui” literally translates as “wind-water.”  Long ago, Chinese builders began to apply certain rules or orientation, calculations, and layout in architecture to align buildings with larger forces they saw as binding the universe.

This can be incredibly complicated.  At heart, the idea is to bring good luck through healthy, conscious design.

My wife, to bring our house in compliance, made sure our bed faced east.  She was cautious about the placement of sharp objects such as scissors and knives.  She hung chimes with Chinese coins at the entry doors to our house (they are still there).  She placed mirrors face up in the toilet tanks for the purpose deflecting vital chi back up instead of allowing it to be pulled down and flushed away.

All fine with me.

And, yes, the mirrors still remain inside my two toilet tanks.

There are points, however, where the quest for good luck takes us down the opposite path.

The story I am about to share dates back to 2017.  In June of that year, an 80-year-old woman boarding a flight from Shanghai to Guangzhou, China, sought to bring good luck to the flight.  Her method for doing so was to fling a handful of coins toward one of the jet engines as she walked by on her way to enter the plane.

A note on that: coins inside jet engines are not good luck. 

Fortunately, another passenger alerted authorities.

The flight was delayed for five hours as mechanics were brought out to scour the jet engine.  In the end, they found one coin inside the engine and the rest scattered on the tarmac below.

The quest for good luck—as all things—has its limits.

—Mitchell Hegman

Source: https://mashable.com, Wikipedia