The Element of Luck

I begin with an interesting question. A young 28-year-old man named Tsutomu Yamaguchi was living in Hiroshima, Japan, at the time the United States dropped an atomic bomb on that city in 1945 to expedite the end of the second world war. He survived. Wisely, he decided to flee the city to go somewhere safe. Where did he go? Nagasaki. A few days later the U.S. dropped its second atomic bomb on - you guessed it - Nagasaki.  Yamaguchi somehow survived that, too. He ended up living another 65 years until his passing in 2010. So, was young Yamaguchi lucky? Or would we consider him to be a very unlucky chap?

Personally, I think you could argue this one either way. Whatever the answer, I suspect he is the only individual in history who can make the claim of having survived two nuclear explosions. One cannot help but be impressed. Perhaps not to the extent of Yamaguchi, but his story got me to wondering how much luck is there involved in successful or effective communication. By "luck" I means aspects of an act by which we have no control. In this case, we are talking about an act representing an attempt to generate mutual understanding and respectful exchange. For example, how "lucky" is, say, a retail store that advertises a sale that results in people actually going to their store to make some cost-savings purchases?

Obviously, the store has no control over anyone's actions. Perhaps a family saw the ad but was committed to going out of town to attend a wedding. Consequently, they had to pass on the sale. Bad luck for the store. On the flip side, perhaps the family had no plans so decided to check-out the sale. Good luck for the store. The point is no matter how much we plan out our acts of communication, there is always an element of risk or the unknown at-play. Simply put, we cannot control everything. What we can do in our planning or research is play the odds, try to influence by making what we share as listener-friendly as possible.