Fortuna Mala

Some days it just doesn’t pay to get out of bed. I know it’s an old saying but it is true, isn’t it? Sometimes the day seems like it’s going to be normal, then there’s that one thing that happens that makes you wish you could just raise your hands and say “Stop! Stop right there!” And like a movie director, you want to put everything in its original place and take it from the top again, but you can’t. So you slog through the day knowing that the world you live in is going to bite you every chance it gets. How I hate those days.

I’m what you would call poor, but I don’t live under a bridge (yet). I know that many people have it so much worse than I do, but that doesn’t make it any better when one of the dark days rolls around. It would be foolish to think that life should be an endless parade of good things and warm feelings; if that were the case, how would we know what “good” was? No, you have to take the sour with the sweet. When I was a child, if I needed an aspirin, my mother would crush one between two spoons and then put some honey on it, and I have to admit that I kind of liked the taste. So doesn’t it seem logical that if your outlook on life is based on the premise that you know things won’t always go your way, you shouldn’t be too disappointed, right? Wrong.

The Roman goddess of luck was called Fortuna. On the days she smiles, she is indeed a goddess, but when she doesn’t, you should just stop what you’re doing and go back to bed. On those dark days, doesn’t it seem like you’re not the only one who’s being tormented? Doesn’t everyone around you act like they have a pitchfork poking them? Even the kindliest looking people reveal themselves to be monsters. I saw a grandfatherly old man today in the grocery store parking lot place his bags in his car and then push his empty cart away, waiting long enough to watch it bang into another car. Then he got in his and left. In that same grocery trip, I saw a young couple with a full basket in the express lane, directly beneath a sign that said, in big letters, “10 Items Or Less”. Since I’m poor, and needed to buy only a few things, I stood in line behind them. When it was finally my turn, I nodded at the couple and said to the clerk, “What a couple of expressholes.” She laughed, and said she had told them this was the express lane, but they said “There’re two of us”, so apparently, they figured they were entitled to 20 items. But this essay isn’t about my bad day; it’s about all of ours.

The aforementioned Fortuna eventually came to be depicted on a wheel that was partly submerged under water, and we humans must ride her device throughout our lives. Like the adage it spawned, if your head is above water, you’re doing all right. But since wheels turn, sooner or later you’re going to be gasping for breath and hoping the wheel is in high gear. For some people, it’s stuck in a skid, burying itself deeper and deeper, making a…rut.

I don’t have any insightful advice about how to deal with the bad days. As I’ve noted, a return to bed is a good idea. So is bourbon, but be careful because that can make a bad day much, much worse. If you don’t have to leave the house or touch anything hot or fix something critical (like the toilet), you should be fairly safe, but keep in mind that the wheel is always spinning. If you forget that, Fortuna will make sure that it only takes a half turn to remind you.

Notes: Find more information on Fortuna here and here.