The Great Timing Belt
15 Jan
One night, while I was waiting for the auto-gate to open so I can park into the porch, my car engine decided to go to bed before me. Later I found out it has something to do with the timing belt, but the first thing that came into my mind was, man it could have waited till I got my car into the porch.
Then as I was heading back to my room, I realized how lucky I was to have it died right in front of the house instead of anywhere else. Being a rational and logical person, I do not believe in luck. Or rather, I do not wish to believe in luck if possible.
A rationalist will argue that I should have replaced the timing belt before it had a chance to breakdown. I agree that I could have prevented the manifestation of bad luck from having my car breakdown in the middle of nowhere. But what about those lucky moments you experience in life like having it break down right in front of your house?
The way to look at this logically would be to consider them coincidence. If something can go wrong randomly, it can sometimes get lucky too. My gripe is that a lot of people do not attribute their success to being lucky. The world is very complicated and so inter-connected that how can you be sure it was all you that made it happened?
So, yes I do believe luck plays a role in both successes and failures. My stand would be try to minimize the chances of bad luck from happening (e.g. changing your timing belt on time) and put yourself in a position that you can enjoy the benefits when the planets decide to align themselves for you but most importantly, never ever rely on it.
Little did I know how a timing belt can remind me of how lucky I am sometimes and how there are things that you simply can’t do anything about. The Great Timing Belt indeed.
Shite happens one way or another. Luck or no luck
for me, being lucky is when good stuff happens when you LEAST expects it. Bad luck is when things decides to eff you up when you need it to go right =P
In short, luck just happens by chance and beyond our control. And yeah, dont rely on it. lolx
@massy Exactly the thought on my mind. Luck? What’s that? Haha.
do you need to overhull ur engine kah?
the last time that happened to me… have to rebuild the engine
@jacklch They say only needed to replace the timing belt and other related ‘belts’. I heard if you don’t attempt to force start it, it should be fine. If you do, the valve or something need to be replaced and that is very troublesome. I guess I was lucky twice. =)
@tslim lucky you XD
If let’s say you change your timing belt to prevent it from breaking down but then it still happened. Is that bad luck?
Some people might not believe in luck but i think they think of it as karma. XD
@kc As I said, you can try to minimize it but you can’t expect everything to go well.
Karma is one way to think about it. It’s too hard for us to grasp the randomness of everyday life so some choose to ignore it, or use other ways to shield themselves.
it’s a case of changing the way we look at things
As a minimalist, I’m using motorcycle so the motorcycle chain is the timing belt in a car .
It seems like I have to be more careful .
I was just recently introduced to this concept of minimalist. Trying to wrap my head around it now.
As for the chain, well hopefully you get lucky when it breaks =)
I think it doesn’t really matter what u call it, but when you encounter it how you choose to react.
I do get the impression at times that when you have a bad day… its like the whole day everything goes wrong….