The Lottery Curse
I do not gamble. I do not find joy in gambling. If anything, gambling causes me anxiety. I hate the idea of throwing money away when I know that I could use it on something more beneficial to me.
That being said, I have played Powerball a handful of times. My conditions to do so are that the Powerball Jackpot is over a billion dollars. This has happened twice in my adult life (that I have paid attention to).
Each time this happens, I spend around $20 on tickets and sit and wait.
Like everybody else, I think of all of the things I could do with that money.
My wife and I could both drive nice cars and live in our dream house that is curated perfectly to our tastes. We could have as many pets as we want and never work again. I could build a state of the art rescue facility with state of the art technology to help care for dogs that our rescue has taken in to help ensure that they experience a better life.
This gets so granular that I can envision dogs undergoing surgery in our facility and being rehabbed on site with our physical therapy pool that helps them learn how to walk again - tracking each step of the progress they make. I can feel the joy of knowing that I am making a tremendous difference while living my perfect life.
Then - anxiety.
While I long for the desire to have an impact and live a lifestyle with my wife that we are in control of - the prospect of winning the lottery scares the hell out of me.
The inherent curse that comes with this is that whatever you do in life is because you won the lottery.
While this fundamentally doesn’t matter as where the money comes from is not relevant to the contributions that you are making to the world but it matters to me.
Why?
At first I thought this was because I care about the thoughts of others. I thought that it was because they would say that the only reason I was able to make anything of my life is because I got lucky.
But it isn’t.
It’s because I can’t handle the thought of not knowing if I could have achieved the same things without luck. Not knowing if I could have made the same thing happen if left to my own devices.
Who cares?
If you are that rich, you are that rich. Why does it matter where the money comes from?
Because I need to demonstrate to myself that I can achieve my potential.
While getting a windfall would be nice - it would strip me of my ability to accomplish this. I could work and work and work and never know if it was me or the money.
In my days of pre-wealth, I would leave in my wake a trail of unaccomplished goals, dreams and ambitions. After-wealth, I would be able to accomplish anything. With the only difference being the money. I’d never be able to take credit for the work that I was able to accomplish.
Therefore, I choose not to gamble. Instead - I invest my time and my money into myself. Into my growth. Into my development. Into doing the work that needs to be done so I can realize my potential and see the person that I can be.
Even then, I won’t be able to take full credit for my work as everything I do is a culmination of the past works of others married to my life experience and the support that I received along the way, but I would know that I was able to pave the life that I wanted to live by learning how to take these lessons, experiences, and support and shape them into something meaningful to the lives of others.