With St. Patrick’s Day around the corner and the thoughts of good luck and fortune I thought today I would touch on the subject of hard luck because all of us have had those times we have felt sorry for ourselves thinking all the bad luck in the world comes our way. But as this poem by one of my favorite poets named Edgar Allen Guest reminds us – we all have to go through our share of hard luck in life so we shouldn’t wallow in self-pity but rather we should recognize we all struggle at different times and different ways  – we have all been there.

HARD LUCK

Ain’t no use as I can see

In sittin’ underneath a tree

An’ growlin’ that your luck is bad,

An’ that your life is extry sad;

Your life ain’t sadder than your neighbor’s

Nor any harder are your labors;

It rains on him the same as you,

An’ he has work he hates to do;

An’ he gits tired an’ he gits cross,

An’ he has trouble with the boss;

You take his whole life, through an’ through,

Why, he’s no better off than you.

If whinin’ brushed the clouds away

I wouldn’t have a word to say;

If it made good friends out o’ foes

I’d whine a bit, too, I suppose;

But when I look around an’ see

A lot o’ men resemblin’ me,

An’ see ’em sad, an’ see ’em gay

With work t’ do most every day,

Some full o’ fun, some bent with care,

Some havin’ troubles hard to bear,

I reckon, as I count my woes,

They’re ’bout what everybody knows.

The day I find a man who’ll say

He’s never known a rainy day,

Who’ll raise his right hand up an’ swear

In forty years he’s had no care,

Has never had a single blow,

An’ never known one touch o’ woe,

Has never seen a loved one die,

Has never wept or heaved a sigh,

Has never had a plan go wrong,

But allas laughed his way along;

Then I’ll sit down an’ start to whine

That all the hard luck here is mine.

~Amy Rees Anderson