Irony/ Murphy's law?
I have bad luck. It's as plain as that. Notice how I said 'I have bad luck' and NOT 'I am unlucky' ? Because yes, there is a difference between the two. In my opinion, having no luck at all is better than having bad luck. This is particularly aggravated in my case given that I seem to be able to bring luck to others so it annoys me that I my existence cannot bring luck to myself. Of course, this is all speculative and I'm sure that any rationalists reading have already designated me as being 'abstract with a touch of loopy' but I thought it would be interesting to explore the spurious (if existing) relationship between bad luck, Murphy’s law and irony.
At first glance of course, my poor luck might seem to be unenviable. But trust me, there can be no greater testimony to the proverbial clouds with silver linings than this. Think about it- now that everyone knows about my poor luck when anything unfortunate happens I can conveniently consign blame to 'the fault in my stars'. In fact, my bad luck often puts me in ironically hilarious situations which on hindsight, send me into fits of laughter.
Just this morning, I had gone to the parlour to wash my hair. ( For all the males out there, YES, THERE DOES EXIST A FACILITY TO WASH YOUR HAIR IN A PARLOUR. I didn't realise that I might have to add this side note until I had made this statement to several of my non- female friends, only to have them tell me with genuine surprise that they did not know salons offer services other than cutting one's hair.) I live in an EXTREMELY humid city and my hair in its natural state isn't as smooth as I would like it to be. But there is something about washing my hair in the parlour that ALWAYS makes it look (and I'm not exaggerating when I say this) ravishingly fantastic.
As you can imagine, I was in a pretty good mood but apparently this wasn't going to last long. Just as I was waiting for my mom to pick me up and head back home, a bird decided that my gleaming hair was the perfect garbage dump to release its excreta onto. I'm presuming this was a particularly fat and unhealthy creature because my head wasn't sullied by the white fluid we're all slightly more familiar with. It was, instead, some ochre tinted lump. (Pardon the disgusting explicitness of my descriptions)
I believe this is a classic example of Murphy's law at work; which basically says 'Anything that can go wrong will'. Until recently, I thought everyone was familiar with the precise phraseology of the law. However, even Interstellar, which accurately captured complex scientific theories got Murphy's law wrong. Cooper says 'Murphy's law does not mean that something bad will happen. It means whatever can happen will happen.' I'm sorry Cooper, that is also NOT what Murphy's law is.
But then again, my incident with the bird poop is also a classic example of irony which I believe to be the gap between what should be' and 'what is'. The ‘what should be’ being My going home with great hair and the ‘what is’ being, well, the diametric opposite.
This then led me to think about how these two ideas were connected, if at all they were.
So we think of irony when we expect something to happen but something else does, isn't it? But isn't that exactly what Murphy's law prepares us for? We eliminate all possibilities as being impossible based on what we think is rational reasoning and expect something to happen, which is why when an alternative possibility plays out, we're taken by surprise. But Murphy's law is the antithesis to this - it basically precludes us from eliminating any of the possibilities, because, well, you never know!
I started out writing this piece with the intention of being able to conclude whether what happened to me this morning was irony or Murphy's law. Ironically, I haven't been able to. Just something to think about.
At first glance of course, my poor luck might seem to be unenviable. But trust me, there can be no greater testimony to the proverbial clouds with silver linings than this. Think about it- now that everyone knows about my poor luck when anything unfortunate happens I can conveniently consign blame to 'the fault in my stars'. In fact, my bad luck often puts me in ironically hilarious situations which on hindsight, send me into fits of laughter.
Just this morning, I had gone to the parlour to wash my hair. ( For all the males out there, YES, THERE DOES EXIST A FACILITY TO WASH YOUR HAIR IN A PARLOUR. I didn't realise that I might have to add this side note until I had made this statement to several of my non- female friends, only to have them tell me with genuine surprise that they did not know salons offer services other than cutting one's hair.) I live in an EXTREMELY humid city and my hair in its natural state isn't as smooth as I would like it to be. But there is something about washing my hair in the parlour that ALWAYS makes it look (and I'm not exaggerating when I say this) ravishingly fantastic.
As you can imagine, I was in a pretty good mood but apparently this wasn't going to last long. Just as I was waiting for my mom to pick me up and head back home, a bird decided that my gleaming hair was the perfect garbage dump to release its excreta onto. I'm presuming this was a particularly fat and unhealthy creature because my head wasn't sullied by the white fluid we're all slightly more familiar with. It was, instead, some ochre tinted lump. (Pardon the disgusting explicitness of my descriptions)
I believe this is a classic example of Murphy's law at work; which basically says 'Anything that can go wrong will'. Until recently, I thought everyone was familiar with the precise phraseology of the law. However, even Interstellar, which accurately captured complex scientific theories got Murphy's law wrong. Cooper says 'Murphy's law does not mean that something bad will happen. It means whatever can happen will happen.' I'm sorry Cooper, that is also NOT what Murphy's law is.
But then again, my incident with the bird poop is also a classic example of irony which I believe to be the gap between what should be' and 'what is'. The ‘what should be’ being My going home with great hair and the ‘what is’ being, well, the diametric opposite.
This then led me to think about how these two ideas were connected, if at all they were.
So we think of irony when we expect something to happen but something else does, isn't it? But isn't that exactly what Murphy's law prepares us for? We eliminate all possibilities as being impossible based on what we think is rational reasoning and expect something to happen, which is why when an alternative possibility plays out, we're taken by surprise. But Murphy's law is the antithesis to this - it basically precludes us from eliminating any of the possibilities, because, well, you never know!
I started out writing this piece with the intention of being able to conclude whether what happened to me this morning was irony or Murphy's law. Ironically, I haven't been able to. Just something to think about.
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