“May the odds be ever in your favor,” a favorite quote in the famous Hunger Games series. It’s something that would be said even in this day and age despite the difference of time between now and when the events of Hunger Games supposedly takes place. The quote in itself can be translated to similar phrases like “Good luck” or “I hope fate is on your side.” The hope for good fortune to happen to you is something we all wish for in our daily lives especially with the things we struggle with today—bills, family, work, school. This quote, “May the odds be ever in your favor,” is reflected in my life. I pray for it every single day.

I have never met a person who said that life was not complicated. With every obstacle that comes my way, I send a silent prayer hoping things work my way, that the odds be in my favor. Before a test, before confrontation, before a tragedy, before anything with risk, I hope that fate is on my side. The truth of the matter is that at one point or another, things will go horribly wrong, but there will be times when things go so right. The odds just stack up the way they do, and we’re helpless to control it.

I never thought much about good luck, fate, cosmic gambling, or any of that sort until I was 7 years old. I simply wasn’t old enough to care before that point. As a child, I had been happy and innocent. On October 9, 2001, my father died. It was the one and only time that I didn’t pray that morning for the day to go well, for the odds or fate to be in my favor. If things were just slightly different, if my family arrived at my school just a little earlier, or a little later, my father wouldn’t have been fatally shot in front of me. Then again, if my brother hadn’t been sick, he would have died too. Were the odds in my brother’s favor? Possibly. Were they in my father’s, mother’s, and my favor? No.
Things just happen. Usually, when the odds are against you, they’re in the favor of another. There is always something gained for one and something lost for another. My brother was saved, my father was not so lucky. The odds were in the favor of the killer and my brother. But why them? Why me? Truth is, just because you ask for the odds to be in your favor doesn’t mean it will happen. It is what it is.

People usually remember events when life just threw something too hard. No one pays attention to the little things that happen that are just tiny blessings in disguise. When I was in 6th grade, I became friends with someone after a simple seat change. Someone in my math class was talking too much, so people were moved around and I found myself next to a person who I never paid much attention to, but after that moment, that just wasn’t the case. I wouldn’t be who I am without my now best friend. It was such a small event, a seat movement that altered my life. It was hardly an event as big as my father’s passing, but it was almost equally as significant.

The odds were just in my favor. If I had been absent or late it may have never happened. I didn’t ask to be moved and I wasn’t asking for extra good luck, but that’s just the way life went. My brother hadn’t asked for good luck either. It doesn’t matter how many times we ask for good chances, it will surprise us anyway. Being best friends with someone, my father dying, it was all sudden. I asked for neither yet there they were. So when saying, “May the odds be ever in your favor,” it doesn’t matter. If it was meant to be then it will happen, if it wasn’t then it won’t.