After a bit of thinking, I've realised that the whole optimist-pessimist argument swings way(too much) in the way of the pessimists, and of course, this makes me a little sad inside, despite being a pessimist inside.

Is the glass half full or half empty? In the life of your average glass, there's a good chance that it spends more than half its life being empty. You don't enjoy watching glasses being filled, you prefer to be emptying them. And while you empty something, it's becoming emptier by the second. May sound simple, but it's true. Same goes for life. Every second you withdraw from it is simply a step closer to that fateful day when your cheeks turn pale, your blood stops flowing and your brain stops juicing. Now, this process is both unbecoming and smelly, so I don't suggest letting too many people see you do it.

This isn't to say I don't see the good side in optimism ; It makes the lows higher and the highs insanely high. Like, say, the maths marks of a Chinese scholar.

There is another force that divides people in a similar manner : luck. Some always assume that lady luck will be on their side, while others believe that while you turn your back, that very same lady will be stabbing you in the back with an imaginary knife. There are also those who believe that a force as great as luck can be manipulated with trinkets suck as black cats, mirrors and ladders.

Find a penny, pick it up, and all day long you'll have good luck? Well, this age old saying no longer proves itself noteworthy. See, back in the age-old times, a penny could buy you a whole lot, ranging from rice to feathered chickens to the screw your head's been missing. But now, a penny isn't going to buy you a whole lot. As time goes by, the cost of fixing the hole it wears in your pocket will far outweigh the benefits of actually having the penny in your pocket. Factor in inflation, and this effect only gets worse as time goes by, and soon enough you'll find that your penny doesn't mean a whole lot. Then you die.

This isn't to say that I don't believe in luck ; After all, I believe that having a good, healthy relationship with chance is the best(and easiest) way to live a good life, however that may be defined. But luck can't be manipulated or created, as some might argue. Luck is always there. You celebrate when good fortune rains down upon you like maths assignments, but while you're unlucky, you just have to accept that you happened to be in the wrong place at the worng time(like I usually am). It should be conventional wisdom that there's no way anyone is going to "turn luck around", after all, there isn't a rule saying that luck is going in one direction at any given time, and you just have to go with the flow.

That being said, for everyone who's trying to fight the forces of the world, luck can be a powerful ally, just unpredictable. And you should just accept it and plod along with your life, not moan and groan about it.