What "Lucky" Really Means: You Don't Deserve Life, Love or Happiness

The word "Lucky" is a loaded word. In no small part because it is so ubiquitously used in Asia. Lucky cats, lucky envelopes, lucky this, lucky that...

But besides all that, it is a staple of how humanity has treated orphans and adoptees since the dawn of time, stemming from ancient traditions of infanticide. People's lives held different values. Orphans were "fortunate" to receive food. Children were "lucky" to be adopted. It flows off the tongue. We, as a society, do not think much about it. Yet adoptees must hear these words all the time. From strangers, relatives, close friends and family. And sometimes, OTHER ADOPTEES who just unconsciously align themselves with the "good" side, completely ignorant of how they diminish the worth of everyone else's concerns.

What lucky really means is that what is being received now, what is being given now, what is being lived and enjoyed now was never meant for them to have. To tell someone they are lucky to be alive means that they do not deserve to live. They do not deserve this life and they have not earned the right to have this life. It means this life was granted unto them by someone else, by someone's charity, by God's hand. You aren't grateful for things you've earned. Are you grateful for your A in the class after you've studied your ass off for the exam, as if that A plopped out of nowhere? No. You are grateful for things you don't deserve. Being grateful for basic human rights such as kindness and love means that those basic rights are not deserved.

I don't prescribe by the words grateful, thankful, or lucky because they imply an undeservedness, as if life circumstances, such as being in an orphanage, can somehow affect how worthy a human being is of basic human rights.  I do not believe life circumstances can ever strip the innate value from any human being. Their value and their rights are owed to their existence. Adoptees and orphans are no less deserving than any other human being on this planet of these fundamental human rights.

It means that Sally and Ben who live down the street deserve to live and deserve to own their lives. It means that you, as an infant, as a baby without words and without any power, were "given up" and do not deserve the life of Sally or Ben. Sally and Ben can eat their food and live in their house without thanking their lucky stars their parents lowered themselves to adopt them. You, my dear, the adoptee, must eat your food which is obviously not YOUR food and obviously never intended for you. You are lucky to have this food. This food is not your food. This life is not your life. This house is not your house. These parents are not your parents. their love was not meant for you. You are lucky to have this life. You are lucky to have these parents. None of it is yours. You don't deserve to live.

Your cousin can eat her holiday dinner with your extended family. She takes for granted that this house and family and food are here. She takes for granted that her parents love her. You sit at the same table and your grandma tells you that you are lucky to be here and not on the streets of China, working in a rice field, being raped by the factory director, dying in the streets. She does not say this stuff. She only says, "You're a lucky girl." Because just imagine if your parents never adopted you, just imagine! Your cousin and you sit next to each other. Your cousin and you are both thankful, but it is different. Because she is not lucky. She is never told that she is a lucky girl. She just is. This is Her life. She deserves to be happy. But you? This very well could not have been yours to experience at all. And everyone knows it. And some people, friends, and family, will never let you forget that they think a one-year-old should pay a life debt until they die.

But this is incredibly myopic. My point of reference in life is not a Chinese orphanage. I was an infant. I remember nothing. It affects me to this day and yet, I can say that my reference point for life is not a dead prostitute or factory worker or rice farmer...My reference points are my friends and neighbors and cousins and parents. At Thanksgiving, I give thanks for reasonable things. I am reasonably thankful for loving parents. I am not and will never be thankful for being plucked from an orphanage by sheer luck--because I respect myself, because I'm not a fucking animal, because I should not have to pay for my life in gratitude and tears. Because I OWN MY LIFE. Because everyone deserves to live and love and be happy. And to only tell adoptees or other people who Life kicked in the groin as infants that the rest of their 99 years are not their own is an absolute travesty.

You were adopted as an infant or a child or a young woman (or man). From a situation in which you had absolutely no control, you were adopted. And still, without any control, society thrusts upon you another burden. Not only do you not have your birthmom or dad, not only do you not have whatever life could have been, but now you do not deserve what little you forge for yourself or how much you forge for yourself, because someone else, some adult, some group of adults, some government, some worker, took away this choice. And on account of your birthmom unable to keep you, the valuation of your life has just taken a hit, and now to be alive is a blessing, no longer a right afforded to you because of the actions and laws of other external powers, and somehow, this has diminished the value and outlook of your life, as an infant, to follow you throughout your days. It never expires. It will never let you go. Society will never forgive you for living. Being told you are lucky or that you should feel lucky or grateful or thankful to have been adopted is the same as being reminded that in their view, you owe them a debt and the debt is your life and you own none of it.

The vocabulary of Lucky is so pervasive in adoptee literature and other media. Legions of adoptees who want to be viewed as "good" or "well-adjusted" adoptees smile before reporters, adoptive parents sitting on either side of them on the couch for the interview, and spew the same "I'm just so lucky to have been adopted by these wonderful people" or the "Wow, I can't believe this is my life now!" as opposed to what? You were adopted at one year old and now you're twelve. What do you mean you can't believe this is your life! You were one year old! This isn't a reality show from rags to riches, you were an infant! 

Adoptive parents have written their own blogs and stories, articles for the New Yorker or the New York Times, with opinions as varied as adoptees' own, yet their words fall flat. The word "lucky" is lodged within the folds of their artful paragraphs about "Chinese culture" and their enlightened views on policy and communism and joy. Journalists do not have time to delve into the nuances of every subculture they write about. I understand that. They receive a task and are told to "get out a story about this adoptee by tomorrow, thanks!" and they do, with words like "lucky" and "thankful" and "blessed" and all the other words to imply that a two year old should bear the weight of the world for the rest of their life.

With the surge in DNA connection stories, most of which are shared because families lack funds to fly out to meet each other, rather than a strong desire to be splashed across national headlines, and as more documentaries about China's one-child policy get pumped out like clockwork every two years, articles are being written by the dozen about the adoptee experience by people who are unqualified to talk about adoption in a clear and meaningful way. My views on the word lucky derive from my personal feelings, but I am in no way alone nor the first person to articulate much of what I expressed here. It is very likely to be listed as number #1 or at least in the top five of words "Never" to say to an adoptee. 

This is why I was disturbed when I read recent articles reviewing the One Child Nation documentary, a documentary about the horrors of the one child policy especially as it pertained to women, consistently use the word LUCKY. They did not see the irony in condemning a nation for creating a generation of orphans and turning around to imply that said adopted orphans were the "lucky ones" or "lucky" in some way, shape, or form. Lucky that human rights violations ravaged a nation? Lucky that this resulted in torn apart families and orphans? Lucky that these babies that would have lived normal lives without government interference were now once again given a loving home. Lucky because their valuation had gone down and to return to them a semblance of normal decent life was now deemed a charitable action. Fuck Lucky.

The adoption community as a whole has overwhelmingly embraced a ban on such a word, though by no means is it a monolithic community without dissenting factions. So why hasn't the world caught up? Are orphans still viewed as Oliver Twist's, Gavroche's of the world? I ask myself why. WHY? Why does the world stubbornly insist upon perpetrating such hatred onto children? Why does the world hurt those most vulnerable and expect them to pay for shreds of human decency? What about Sally or Laura makes them different from Yuna? Why are human lives measured and valued? And why are adoptees valued so little that it is acceptable to tell them they are lucky day and night?

To my past self, who has struggled with feelings of shame and of "deserving" life, love, and happiness, I want to tell you that no one person or deed can devalue your life. Those people who consistently tell adoptees they are lucky to be alive do not understand the implications of such a statement because they have never tried to imagine what it is like in your shoes. Believe me when I say that feeling "lucky" to have basic human rights secured, to be thankful in a way tied up with begging forgiveness to be alive and to enjoy it, is a complete waste of human life. You can be on your death bed and this life debt will never let you go, so why not begin living now? Why not start to own your life now? To enjoy it? To call a thing a thing and say that telling adoptees they are lucky is insensitive and wrong and disgusting and fueled from a medieval fire where babies were sacrificed without another thought. We've evolved from infanticide, from Oliver Twist, from thinking that orphans were less than human...but this smoke hangs around adoptees to this day. Lucky is a holdover from the past. You deserve to live just as everyone deserves to live.

Nothing in life can diminish ANYONE's innate value as a human being. Nothing. No matter where they were born, all humans have value. Being forced to be given up does not affect this value. You are and have always been a noble soul. To others out there who have struggled with this pain, you too own your own soul. It does not need to be given to you. It does not need to be rescued or saved. It exists because it has a right to exist. Once you know this, it becomes clear how irrelevant, ludicrous, and insulting it is to apply the Logic of Lucky and all that it implies to a noble being.