You never know what worse luck your bad luck has saved you from. — Cormac McCarthy

You never know what worse luck your bad luck has saved you from.

Author: Cormac McCarthy

Insight: We spend so much energy rehashing the things that went wrong—the job we didn't get, the relationship that ended, the opportunity that fell through—that we rarely stop to consider what that disappointment might have spared us from. McCarthy's observation cuts against our natural instinct to view setbacks as pure loss. That missed promotion? Maybe it would have meant working for someone impossible, or relocating to a place that made you miserable. The relationship that didn't work out? Perhaps you dodged years of quiet incompatibility or worse. This isn't about forced positivity or pretending bad things don't sting. They do. But there's something genuinely clarifying about recognizing that life is constantly filtering out options, and we rarely have the information to know whether we should be grateful or devastated. The rejection letter arrives, and yes, it hurts. But you can't see the version of yourself that would have been shaped by saying yes to something that wasn't right. The real usefulness here is learning to sit with uncertainty about your own story. When something disappointing happens, the urge to immediately assign it meaning—to decide whether it's "good luck in disguise" or just bad luck—is nearly irresistible. Maybe the wisest response is simply to stay humble about knowing. The worst luck might be doing something you wanted very badly.

Source: The Road, p. 194, 2006