The biggest news in the past few days in the United States isn’t about another murder/suicide. It isn’t about anything related to politics. It isn’t about any scandal. And it’s not about anything relating to the economy. Well I guess on some level I might have to take that last statement back with the amount of money being spent to create this piece of news. The headline on Friday for most major news outlets was the Powerball jacket has soared to around $600 million dollars.
With people buying dozens and dozens of tickets at a time while enduring lines that I read in some areas were hours long, it has got me wondering how many of those individuals are hoping that a win for them would make their lives so much better.
Here’s the blunt truth. Besides the 1 in 175 million chance of winning this lottery, the sad reality is that if you feel you life stinks where it’s at now, it’s still going to stink the same if you win all that money. The only difference is that you’ll have a lot more distractions now to make you forget why it stunk in the first place.
How do I know this?
I’ve lived it.
While I haven’t won some large glorious sum of money through a state lottery, I did inherit an incredible amount from my parents after their untimely deaths. Prior to their passings, my life was often miserable. I had a lot of baggage in it that was much in part due to my own doing. I surrounded myself with unhealthy people. I chased all sorts of addictions to find temporary happiness. I didn’t like myself and I did what I could to avoid that fact. When I inherited the money, it became a wonderful new way to distract myself from me.
With it, I bought cars, houses, gadgets, clothes, vacations, and more. And for a time, I forgot about that miserable person that existed before I came into that money. Unfortunately, having a lot more money brought in other complications instead such as higher taxes and friends that I wasn’t sure most of the time if they were only around me for the free things I gave them. Even worse, the more money I had, the more I felt like it was never going to be enough. Though all of this, my ego swelled and I grew more selfish and self-centered. And eventually I blew through most of what my parents had left me, leaving me in the same state I was in before I ever had a single penny of it….miserable.
Coming into a ton of money suddenly, does not miraculously make all one’s trouble’s go away. They only get masked and suppressed for awhile. Sure I felt great for a bit of time and was constantly doing new things and surrounding myself with a lot of people. But deep down inside, I was still avoiding those things that had made me be that miserable person in the first place.
It’s like the sad and lonely guy who walks into a bar and says he’s buying everyone’s drinks for the night. He suddenly becomes quite popular and as he drinks, he forgets about how sad and lonely he was in the first place. But what happens when all his money is gone and he sobers up? The people are gone and he’s sad and lonely again. The same thing holds true with winning the lottery or coming into any large sum of money for a person who was sad, or lonely, or miserable, or hating their life before receiving it. The principle holds true as well for any person who moves from one location to another hoping for a geographical cure from their misery. It holds true with any person who consumes any substance to numb their senses so they don’t have to think about the fact they don’t like their life. Happiness doesn’t come from any of this and especially not from $600 million dollars. While it might make someone happy for a time, it won’t last.
The only true happiness I’ve found in my life is when I’m trying to do God’s will. In that, I’m not chasing money or some other thing to bring me happiness. Instead, I’m focusing in on how I can not only help myself heal from all the selfishness I lived in, I’m also out there trying to help others heal too. Thankfully, I have learned this lesson and am not out buying hundreds of dollars of tickets hoping to win. Will I buy just one for the sheer fun of it? Probably. But the difference today is that my life is already getting better and much happier with God at the center of it. And so if I was to win, the only happiness that would increase within me would be when I reach out to donate much of it to others who need it a lot more than I ever would.
Peace, love, light, and joy,
Andrew Arthur Dawson