Do Things That “Just Happen” Really Come Down to Luck?

Looking at Jaime Xie today, it is hard to imagine her as someone who used to dread social situations.

Jaime, the guest on the second episode of our interview series “小鱼说｜见她,” is a runner, a certified running coach, and the founder of Melbourne’s Mad Rabbit Crew. She hosts a podcast, paces races, and in 2024 ran the mass-participation marathon at the Paris Olympics.

But running was never part of the life she had originally imagined for herself. At school, she barely ever passed her running tests. She only took up running after she started working, gradually building from one kilometre to a marathon. Alongside running, she had another identity for ten years: accountant. Only recently did she leave that decade-long accounting career to move into work connected with running. Put those experiences together, and a neat story practically writes itself: someone who was never good at running falls in love with it, starts a running club, finds more and more opportunities, and eventually turns her passion into a career.

Yet during our interview, when Jaime told the story herself, she kept returning to one phrase: “It just happened.” The running club seemed to have just happened. Becoming a coach, starting a podcast, pacing races, getting to know more people in the running community—all of it seemed to happen as one thing led to another. Even when we discussed some particularly unusual opportunities in her life, she did not describe them as the results of a carefully plotted plan.

It made me curious: do things that seem to “just happen” really come down to luck? The more we talked about the running club, the more interesting that question became. Jaime had not started with some grand ambition to build a career in running. During the pandemic, the club she used to run with stopped meeting. She still wanted to run, so she began inviting friends along. Then more people joined, and there was more to do. Her thinking was simple: if we are going to run together, let’s look after this group properly and make sure everyone enjoys coming. People wanted to enter races, so she organised it. They wanted club shirts, so she contacted suppliers. They wanted to work with brands, so she pursued those partnerships. When something needed a plan, she made one. When she did not know how to do something, she learned. Often, she said, it was the others who were pushing her forward.

“I wouldn’t turn a hobby into some huge responsibility, or make it the direction of my whole life.”

At least, not at the beginning. But little by little, things changed. A running club that had started as a hobby gradually took her somewhere she had never imagined going. At that point, I asked her: “These opportunities seem to have come along unexpectedly. But is it possible that you happened to be in the right place—and happened to have the ability to make something of them?”

Jaime’s answer was interesting: “Your abilities develop gradually in response to what reality asks of you.” That sentence made luck seem rather less straightforward. The opportunity itself might genuinely arrive by chance. But whether you notice it, walk towards it, or ask one more question when it does—that may not be chance at all.

During the Sydney Marathon, Jaime happened to spot an overseas running content creator she had followed for a long time near Darling Harbour. She could not quite remember his real name and was not entirely sure she had recognised the right person. But she went after him anyway. “Hi, are you Running Shoes World?” He tilted his head and smiled. “Maybe?” “Then you must be!” she said. She immediately invited him to visit the brand she was representing at the time. He said the queue outside the expo was too long and he might not have time. Her first reaction was: no problem, I’ll sort that out for you. And he did come.

She told the story lightly: “Just ask. If it’s not him, it’s not him.” But I loved that little detail. We often wonder why some people always seem to come across opportunities. Perhaps they do not encounter any more of them than anyone else. Perhaps, when the same thing happens in front of two people, one takes a look and walks on, while the other goes after it and asks another question. That may be the small but important difference between something “just happening” and actually making something of the opportunity.

Of course, being willing to ask is not enough on its own. Jaime also loves making plans. That might sound almost at odds with the idea of things “just happening”: a life she had not planned, lived by someone who likes to plan things carefully. I do not think the two conflict at all. You cannot necessarily plan when the next opportunity will appear. But you can decide what you will be doing before it does.

The running club needed someone to organise it, so she took it on. Working with brands meant learning how to communicate, so she learned. Speaking in front of people meant practising, so she practised, again and again. As a child, she had not been particularly outgoing. During the interview, she told me about an essay she had written at school. It was selected as an outstanding piece to be read aloud, but without asking her, the teacher chose another student to read it. The teacher explained that she knew Jaime was shy and would not want to read in front of everyone, even if it was her own work. So Jaime wrote another essay about that. I realised that she had always wanted to express herself; earlier on, she had simply done more of it in writing. At university, she was repeatedly pushed into situations before she felt ready: joining activities, standing in front of people, dealing with strangers. Later, running the club meant speaking up, organising, and connecting people over and over again. She did not suddenly transform from painfully shy to effortlessly sociable one day. It was more that life kept asking her to take one step forward, and each time, she actually took it. Her abilities grew that way. By the time the next opportunity arrived, she was no longer the person she had been the last time.

So, looking back, a lot of it seems to have unfolded smoothly. But beneath that apparent ease are all sorts of small actions: you went. You spoke up. You did the work. You did not know how, but you tried anyway. Until one day, something that had begun as a hobby was taking up an increasingly important place in her life.

Then she faced a choice much harder than whether to ask one more question. She had worked in accounting for more than ten years. And she did not dislike it. Quite the opposite: she really enjoyed it. She liked working with numbers. She liked tax. Her father was an accountant too, and having grown up around it, she had never found the work boring. She had earned the qualifications and already invested ten years of time and energy. To make matters more complicated, her last firm was a good one: good people, a good team, a manageable workload. As she put it, “If I’d been at another firm, I probably wouldn’t have agonised over it so much.”

This was not a choice that could easily be packaged as an inspirational story: “I finally found the courage to leave a job I hated.” Quite the opposite. The real difficulty was this: when there is nothing particularly wrong with the life you have, but another direction is becoming more and more compelling, do you go? During the interview, I deliberately brought back my earlier question: was leaving accounting another thing that “just happened,” or was it her own choice? “A bit of both, I suppose,” she said.

I liked that answer. No talk of bravely chasing a dream, or finally discovering her true self. In real life, perhaps most decisions that truly matter are like this. Life nudges you along a little, and at some point you also decide to take the step yourself. Perhaps that was why, towards the end of our interview, when we talked about the future, I felt for the first time that she was no longer describing something that had simply happened.

Through the club and her work, Jaime is now meeting more and more running brands from China. She is also seeing more clearly where the running markets in China and Australia could connect. She said she had a “big dream,” a slightly idealistic one. She wanted to be a bridge. There are many good Chinese running brands hoping to expand overseas, and she wants to help connect them with local races and communities in Australia. If Australian races want to reach China, she hopes to help make that connection too. “I want to do this,” she said. To me, that sentence felt a little different from all the stories of things “just happening” that had come before.

Looking back, she would often say: that was simply how it happened. She kept running, and a club took shape. She kept doing the work, and new opportunities came along. One opportunity led to the next. This time, though, she already knew where she wanted to go.

Perhaps there really are many things in life that cannot be planned. We do not know when the next opportunity will arrive, or what form it will take. But luck may not be quite as mysterious as we imagine. Sometimes, it is simply that you have kept showing up, doing the work in front of you. For long enough, and with enough care. Then one day, an opportunity happens to pass by.

You notice it. You walk over and ask one more question. And by then, you also happen to have the ability to make something of it. An opportunity may arrive by chance. Being able to make something of it rarely does. Further down the road, perhaps the real change is that you are no longer just someone who happened to be in the right place.

You begin to know where you want to stand.