The fact that they call it a syndrome – a term usually used for medical reasons – should be enough of a clue about how unhealthy it is, but proponents of the “Lucky Girl Syndrome” social media trend strongly believe, or at least appear to believe, that they’re operating at peak levels. Indeed, the trend is all about belief. It’s frustratingly simple: believe it, feel good about it, become it.

My jaw dropped at irresponsible takes by experts who say it’s like Cognitive Behavioural Therapy and that the reticular activating system of the brain will respond to the instructions relayed through affirmations, and I was relieved to find meaningful pushback. Shirin Eshkanani (Instagram: @wholeheartedcoaching) said it well: “We must also acknowledge what a privilege it is to believe. Manifestation is rooted in what we believe is possible for us. It is founded on the belief that we are worthy and deserving of good things. Belief is a privilege. It is a privilege that many folks who have experienced trauma or who come from historically marginalized communities have not experienced.”

            The Lucky Girl Syndrome is better categorized under Toxic Positivity – a very dangerous way of framing events and emotions, which gaslights those who try to engage with the actual so as to effectively change their reality, rather than deny its impact.

            Lately, I often wake up feeling grateful that I don’t have what I don’t have (like children) as much as I feel grateful for what I do have (which I could not have had, if I’d gotten what I had wanted). Fate, distinct from luck, has much to do with this. As does my free will. If I’d tried to dupe myself into believing that I was entitled to what I wanted because of sheer wanting alone, I would’ve been mired in worse disappointment. What was truest for me and what I most hankered for have not always been the same thing. It is only now that I consider myself lucky, after the fact, the way one does after narrowly evading an accident.

            In times of perfect alignment, when the narrative of my life has made eloquent sense, I experience wonder about the Universe’s undercurrents of pattern and play and mystery. I’ve said: “Sometimes I feel like I was walking down a path eating a fruit, and threw a seed, and a decade later I came back and there was a tree.” By the time an original longing was made manifest, I thought my desires were different. I was sweetly surprised by what still held true, by the way I still fit into a life I thought I had lost. A life that that was perhaps always meant to be mine.

But luck had nothing to do with it. I was, in fact, abjectly unlucky. I certainly didn’t orchestrate the trajectory of anything through wish alone, but there was no dearth of effort on my part. It was sheer will that saved me. Struggle and disillusionment characterized the nature of the time between desire and fruition.

So I see the longing of those who want to be Lucky Girls. I wish they knew what I know now.

An edited version appeared in The New Indian Express in March 2023. “The Venus Flytrap” appears in Chennai’s City Express supplement.