Lucky Enough to be Average

Tessa Somerauer
Jan. 16th, 2026

When the average person thinks of luck, they think of winning something, gaining something. The average person thinks of getting something they don’t need but would like.

For example, you’re lucky because of what you got for christmas, or even your birthday.

But the average person doesn’t think of luck as something they don’t need.

The average person hangs out with friends not grabbing on to every moment, or thinking about the possibility of losing them.

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The average person has never been in a bomb shelter or seen what seems to be the world ending then have to go to school the next day like nothing happened.

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The average person doesn’t even need to know where the nearest bomb shelter is when they’re out with friends.

The average person doesn’t have bomb shelters at all.

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The average person has the luxury of being able to leave their floor dirty because they don’t need to worry about tripping over something when running to the bomb shelter as the sirens start up again at 3 in the morning.

The average person has never entered their room to find a window broken because the shockwaves from the ballistic missiles were just a little stronger that night.

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The average person doesn’t need to be scared when asked where they live.

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The average person doesn’t have pictures of explosion clouds from the sky on their phone.

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The average person doesn’t get called a murderer for simply living somewhere.

I want to redefine luck for you. I want you to have read this and realize the life you're living isn’t normal. In fact, you’re very lucky. I bet you’ve never experienced anything I just mentioned. I’m guessing most of you reading this think of yourselves as “the average person”. That is luck. Not winning something or getting things you don’t need. Luck is never having to learn how fragile life really is. Luck is not knowing the sound of siren F71. Luck is not knowing what a siren F71 is. If this feels distant, uncomfortable, or hard to imagine, that is exactly the point. That distance is your luck. 

Now I want to attempt to make you understand what being that not so “average person” feels like. My best example for this is my many nights spent in the bomb shelter of my basement. If you haven’t caught on yet, I’m talking about Israel. I don’t want to think this doesn’t happen in other places, but for the purpose of explaining exactly how war makes innocent civilians feel, I’m going to be using where I lived, Israel, as an example.

Now living in Israel during a war time has given me a habit that my mom loves. I never go to sleep with a cluttered floor. And no, I don’t have OCD or anything else like that, thank you very much. It’s because when the sirens sound at 3 am, you’re not fully there. It takes a minute to realize what's going on. To realize it's not a nightmare. But you only have a minute to get to your bomb shelter. I think once you experience that, you truly realize time is such a luxury. The worst part is that habit follows me wherever I go. I live in LA now, the quietest neighborhood to have ever existed, but my floor is always clean. And when someone comes home late and slams their car door, you can be sure that I’m halfway down my stairs before I realize this house doesn’t have a bomb shelter. It doesn’t need one.

Hearing my house shake while the siren screams for what feels like eternity is something I hope nobody reading this will ever experience.

Waking up in the middle of the night to that horrible siren is something I hope nobody reading this will ever experience.

I hope, I sincerely hope, that whoever reading this is lucky enough to have a cluttered floor. I hope that they are lucky enough that the only siren to ever wake them up is the alarm they put up to start the day. I hope that they are lucky enough to get the luxury of sitting at a desk all day without worrying that there would be another attack.

I hope, I sincerely hope, that every uncomfortable moment you have in your life, you realize that you are lucky to think that moment is as bad as it gets.