Rolling 1s

I play D&D with my friends once a week, and a big part of D&D is rolling dice. The dice have different numbers of sides, from the four-sided d4 to the twenty-sided d20, all with numbers ranging from 1 to whatever number of sides that die has. Typically, higher numbers are better. They represent better results on Ability Checks and Attack Rolls, and they mean greater damage and more healing. The higher numbers you roll, the better your luck was.

We rolled a lot of 1s tonight.

And yet, as the game went on, the number of 1s and other low rolls we got became fairly comical. We laughed at our characters' bad fortune, and we marveled the unlikelihood of such an impressive string of bad luck. And it helps that the bad luck ultimately didn't matter all that much. Our numbers were just barely high enough when it really mattered, and even if they weren't, it was only a game. In the long run, the bad luck we had tonight was more funny and impressively rare than it was unfortunate.

Thus it is, or can be, with life. We can learn to laugh at our own misfortune, at least after some time has passed. We can appreciate the novelty of especially bad luck. And we can choose not to get worked up about things that don't actually matter. Will getting a flat tire today or tomorrow really matter years later? Will almost anything that happens in mortality really matter millennia after we pass on? Granted, there will be a few things that matter, but only such things as are in our direct control. Our choices will matter. Our luck will not.

So, when we roll 1s and other low numbers on the dice of life, we should try not to let that upset us. Yes, the misfortune is, by definition, unfortunate, but it can also be funny, impressive, and ultimately unimportant. A few bad rolls, or even several in quick succession, cannot change our eternal  progress. As long as we keep trying to move forward, God will count that as progress, no matter what our actual results are.

Naturally, we would prefer to have better luck, but when we get back luck, we can laugh at it, marvel at it, shrug it off, and keep striving to move forward.