You make your own luck. That’s what everybody tells you. I can’t really hear it anymore. I thought I’d understood what it means. I am doing things, I am speaking out, I am much more proactive than before, what more can you want?
This weekend, I suddenly understood what it meant. And as happened a lot lately, it took a sexual experience to drive the point home.
I had been to a personality development via sexual means workshop whose proposition was that sex is so close to our selves, that it’s there where they’re starting the work, because that touches you the deepest and that’s the most profound way to go for change in your life. I found that to be true, that workshop had shifted a lot of my former beliefs and I feel more free now than ever before. Only because my thinking changed because of my experiences with myself there. It was fascinating.
This weekend, I attended a sex party with my partner. It was a very elaborate party, several hundred guests, the setting very detail-oriented, I had heard lots of praise beforehand. I was hyped.
I wanted to have fun. I talked to my partner about what we each wanted to experience. I wanted to have sex with someone I just met there. I wanted to know how that experience would play out, sex with a person I knew nothing about and had no connection to.
The party offered several different play areas. There was the classic Play Area, but they also built extra stuff. You could play prostitute and offer your services to other people there while your partner had fun haggling your price. Once your fake money ran out, you could go to the casino and gamble for more. There was a Darkroom where you could experience blindfolded anonymous sex with an unknown number of people. There was a metro tunnel where you could go for rape play. You could mark yourself as “you can touch me without asking”. There was so much more. It was a buffet of options.
I had expected it to be easy to find something to do. I hadn’t accounted for myself: there was so much stuff and so many people, that of course it was almost impossible to get to talk to people without trying. Or to get action without acting. Which is kind of obvious, in hindsight. I had difficulties getting into the easy party mode. I was stuck.
After looking around and walking through the venue several times didn’t result in sexy times, we decided to try the blue bracelet, marking me as “you may touch me without asking me for permission”. It didn’t take long, and I felt hands creeping up my sides and caressing my butt. Someone behind me had decided to become proactive himself (which many people there didn’t do, so yay for him!). My partner told me the guy looked friendly, and I was curious to see where it went.
I didn’t have a plan, and so I just said that I wanted to go to a less prominent place to get things started. To talk about what we’d do. Then some miscommunication happened, which led to me having a very good time in a very unexpected but very satisfying way.
Afterward, I talked to my partner, and we decided to do that again, this time on purpose rather than accidentally, like the first time, and it ended up being a great experience for both of us.
Now, back home, we reflected some more on it and it suddenly hit me.
I only got to have an experience because people dared be active.
I put on the blue bracelet. Which was a very tiny baby step.
The guy approached me and touched me. Without knowing whether I’d reject him, he took a dare, putting himself out there.
This resulted in the first experience.
The second time, my partner and I actively created a situation and invited others to join and they gratefully accepted the offer. There was an immediate response and it was our situation. We owned it. It was very empowering.
The best way to maximize the possibility of getting what you want or of having any kind of experience is to extend an invitation. If you don’t put yourself out there, you’re very dependent on other people’s invitations, which might or might not come.
I find it easier now, in any context, to put myself out there. To give it a try. To risk my invitation being rejected. But generally, from my experience and from observing other people, invitations are generally accepted and people a thankful for being presented with these opportunities.
I can create opportunities for myself by setting the stage.
That’s really how you create your own luck and not wait for others to create it for you.
But I had to understand it the hard way, by becoming stuck. Chance helped me getting unstuck, and then I had the opportunity to immediately reinforce that lesson to really drive the point home.
I feel I will mull this one over for quite some time to come.
