Recently, my brother Benjamin picked up a new hobby: poker. Well, being that it's sort of a party activity, we've all been playing the game, my sister, myself, our husbands. It's fun, it's challenging, it's do-able, even for newbies. In the meantime, I dwell on the concept of "luck." Some people are born with it, some people are born under the unlucky star. I listen to the news and hear of strange deaths, wild saves. Luck. Chance.

Or is it? It's the wild deaths and strange saves that throw me. The children who survive days and days in abandoned cars next to unlucky parents who died in the accident. The man who was left in the ocean by his fellow diving buddies, only to be saved by passing boy scouts, one with a set of binoculars. The uncovered avalanche victim who survived. Luck. Chance.

Or is it a kind of predestination? Do we have a predestined time to check out...or win something big...or land that job we always wanted...or have the kids when we do...or not. I look around and to be sure, my life wouldn't be the way it is now if it wasn't for the chance meetings, the chance losses. Everything seems to roll along, all leading to one place. Here. Now.

So, I wonder. Is it chance? Or intension?