Musings from the Grange
by Lilly Wit

Last Tuesday, my daughter and I sat in a whitewater raft ready to tackle the last Class 5 rapid on our trip down a West Virginia river.

Our path over the first boulder was not a success.  We came in too far to the right and got swept in completely horizontal to the rock.  As both the water coming over the rock and the water from the white water cap in front of it hit the front of the boat, it crumpled in half, immediately dumping us into the water.

My daughter came up fairly quickly and was right next to the boat waiting to be hauled back in when an undertow caught her leg and pulled her back under the water.

She spent the next few minutes being dragged along the bottom of the river, unable to get to the surface.  After what seemed like forever, she finally found air and a boat quickly arrived to pull her out of the water.  Later, her face totally white, her eyes as big as saucers and filled with tears, she whispered, “I really thought I was going to drown.”

Meanwhile, I was also under water. After what seemed like forever, I fought my way to the surface only to find myself in the worst part of the whitewater.  I had time for half a breath before a huge whitecap came crashing down, forcing me back under water.  I fought again, came up again and the raging water slammed me back under.  After the 5th time it happened, I was thinking, “I’m going to drown.”  Fortunately, just then, someone grabbed me by my life vest and dragged me into a boat.  I, too, had been saved.

Later, as my daughter and I traded stories with the other boat passengers, they looked at us in surprise.  Apparently, they had had a very easy time of it, simply putting up their feet and floating downstream.

As our fellow passenger Klaus said, in his heavy German accent, “It sounds like you got the bad luck.”

In our start-up company assistance programs at Innovation Park, we hear a lot about bad luck.  In fact, nowhere does luck seem to play such a big role as in young businesses.  It’s bad luck to miss a sale by a day.  It’s bad luck to wear the wrong socks to a funding pitch and get shutout.  If business were a sport, the gum would have to be Big League, the sunflower seeds barbeque, and the Gatorade blue, or, you know, something bad will happen.

What we often lose sight of when we talk about bad luck is that there is a lot of good luck rolled up inside the bad.  Bad luck gives us amazing life lessons in wisdom, problem solving, good habits, fortitude and strength.  It lets us know that things can always go wrong, but maybe, just maybe, it will all be okay at the end.

As author Napoleon Hill once said, “There are seeds of success in any bad luck.”

Two days later, I was home recovering from my near death experience.  At 2:00AM, I was suddenly awakened by a squeezing pain in the middle of my chest.  Several hours later I was in the catheterization lab at the hospital, having a stent put in my heart.  It turns out I had a 100% blockage in my “Widow-maker” artery.

After the procedure, the doctor was talking to my husband, Scooter, and told him that, given my age, my general good health, and limited risk factors, they could only attribute the heart attack to just plain old “bad luck.”

I wondered as I lay in the hospital, “Does this mean my life is about to change?”

The answer, I learned when I got home, was no.  My kids were fighting, my daughter was mad because she couldn’t use the car, there wasn’t any food in the refrigerator, and the house was a mess.

Life goes on, and despite my bad luck, I’m still here to be part of it.

Hopefully, the worst of the bad luck is over for the summer, but just in case, I’m only wearing my black socks and all of my Gatorade is blue.

Still, cross your fingers for me and wish me good luck.  I think I might need it.