What Does The Lottery Teach Us About Dreams
I have always been fascinated by the lottery. I'm talking about the jackpot millions that people win, not the short story by Shirley Jackson that scared anyone who read it in grade school. When we talk about it in regards to money rather than being stoned to death or heading into the Hunger Games, it is a fun, crazy proposition. The idea that someone could win mega-millions by just being lucky is incredibly appealing.
It is equally fascinating to read about the winners. I think we all have some idea of what we would do with the money if the numbers that popped up matched the ticket in our hands. Sometimes, people make great choices, but more often than not, 70% look up after five years and realize that all their money is gone. This happens for various reasons, including theft, divorce, and just plain recklessness. Winning the lottery almost seems like too much money to spend, but trust me, when you have it, you'll find a way.
Experts largely agree that people lose lottery money so quickly because they didn't know how to handle it when they got it. Frankly, that's why our dreams exist in the state that they do. If we could snap our fingers and pay for them, then they wouldn't have the same value as if we earned them. We also wouldn't have learned the traditional upkeep lessons that we need to maintain success. Having something handed to you isn't the same as earning it.
But here's the thing about the lottery: everyone who plays believes they have a chance. Even if the odds are one in a million, which I think are worse than that for a traditional power bowl, everyone buys a ticket with a bit of hope in their heart, thinking, "I could be the one." And they think that because they know it's true. If they aren't the one today, they could be the one next week, and that hope will last as long as people maintain it.
What if we could keep the same hope in our dreams? The lottery isn't a skill game. It's not like gambling, where everyone has a system, even though that rarely works. You don't get better the more often you play the lottery. It doesn't matter how you purchase the ticket or how you choose the numbers; your odds don't change. This makes it very easy to separate our ego from our work because we know the odds are slim. We just do what we can by entering in the first place.
Every summer we play bingo at the beach. It has been one of my favorite activities for years. The beach club we are members of gets together with about 75 people, and everyone brings in a baked good as a prize. It is low stakes and high fun, but like with the lottery, we can't get any better at bingo. Sure, it requires us to pay attention to the numbers being called and our overall board, but beyond that, we can't do anything if they call the number that our neighbor needs instead of ours. So if, like the lottery, we can't improve our skills, what can we do?
We can increase the odds. One lottery ticket has a specific amount of odds to win, but having 10, 100, or 1,000 tickets all gives us better odds. We do the same thing at bingo. Each of us plays four cards, and when someone steps out to go to the bathroom, we play 6 or 8 to ensure not a single number is missed.
Dream chasing is a certain mix of skill and luck. In one of my favorite musicals, Pippin, they sing, "It is smarter to be lucky than it's lucky to be smart." If I have to choose between the two, I will always choose luck. Lucky people win the lottery more often than intelligent people do. But we don't get to choose how lucky we are. We have to lean into our strengths and control our skills.
At a certain point in every dream, we just have to do the work until our number gets called. We were talking about this last night with regard to my brother. He is out in LA, chasing his dream of being a screenwriter. That is a huge dream. It will probably take years of writing, pitching, and waiting tables to see it come true. But it is always possible that he meets someone tomorrow who falls in love with his creativity and immediately buys a script to put on the screen. That kind of thing happens every day, too, so why not him?
We can hope that luck shines upon us while chasing our dreams, but it is better to bank on our skills. Increasing that and then waiting for luck to draw our name may be the best strategy for success, regardless of what our dream is. But if we can approach our activity with the detached ego of someone buying a lottery ticket, we'll find our mental stamina much stronger. The odds of our dreams coming true are better than winning the lottery because we control them by the work we put in. We always have the opportunity to increase our odds, and when we earn our dreams, we can rest assured that we'll be prepared to handle them.