Fluke

**Have you ever felt** that your life path hinged on a tiny event? Maybe you caught a train by seconds or stumbled onto a chance encounter that changed everything. This book opens with exactly that kind of moment: how a single tourist trip once helped spare an entire city. Suddenly, the boundary between everyday coincidence and world-shaking events looks thinner than we ever realized.

We’re used to thinking that big outcomes naturally stem from big causes. We assume planning and rational choices guide history as much as they guide our personal ambitions. It’s comforting to believe that if we just do better analysis or set stricter routines, life will be safer, more predictable.

But as this book reveals, unpredictability runs deeper than a few random twists of fate. Tiny details—like a cloud passing at the right moment or an overlooked piece of intelligence—might reorganize entire societies. Even the routine flick of a snooze button can ripple out in ways we rarely notice.

The goal here is not to scare you but to show the hidden power of chance and chaos in everyday life. By recognizing these forces, we can move beyond the illusion of perfect control and welcome a more vibrant, creative engagement with the world.

Many of us strive to plan everything: the best school, ideal career, perfect family. We treat life like a puzzle to be solved with the right strategy or formula. Whether it’s mapping out quarterly sales or forecasting the next five years, people search for ways to turn uncertainty into certainty.

Yet history shows that grand plans can unravel from small surprises. Leaders who were convinced they had foolproof strategies bungled entire wars or economies because one tiny detail—like a misread signal or a stray incidence of bad weather—threw off the script.

At a personal level, the illusion of control can be equally misleading. We may obsess over meticulously arranged schedules, only to watch a minor traffic detour reshuffle the entire day. In that moment, we discover how powerless we are before randomness.

When we cling too tightly to the idea that everything is under our thumb, we reject the reality that chance is always at play. Recognizing this doesn’t mean giving up on ambition. It means accepting that chaos has a seat at the table, whether we like it or not.