Why I Play the Lottery
Casinos scare me to death, largely thanks to the whole idea of no windows and no clocks to keep you losing money for all of eternity. But I do gamble, I guess. The word “gamble” comes with a whole lot of negative connotations, which is why I usually say “I play the lottery” instead. Sounds a lot more acceptable, since “lottery” is a word you associate with old people. (At least, for most of my life so far, I have made this association.)
Once a week, usually on Thursday, I walk into a local bodega or 7-Eleven, two crisp one-dollar bills in my hand, and exchange them for a single piece of white and pink paper. I do not pick my own numbers, as I’ve decided that the odds are so low that random chance has a better chance than I do. Pretend that makes any logical sense. I ask either for “one Mega Millions ticket, please,” or “one Powerball ticket, please,” whichever has a larger jackpot, because go big or go home, as they say. It’s a simple exchange. I do not feel trapped in the bodega or coerced into spending hundreds of dollars. So I gamble, but I do it the safe way, I like to think.
The first time I bought a lottery ticket for myself was a couple of years after I was legally allowed to do so. The Mega Millions jackpot had reached the billions for the first time ever, and I figured it was the most opportune time to take the plunge. I bought eleven tickets ($22) at Stop & Shop, as eleven is my favorite number. I did not earn back a single buck.
For perhaps the past five months, every week, I’ve been making this $2 exchange. I have still yet to win back even the tiniest fraction of my investment. So why do I do it?
It’s hope people! That emotion so absolutely insuppressible even the face of utter disaster and disappointment. The fact that the odds exist, even if they are only 1 in 302.6 million, is enough to keep this hope alive, to fuel those daydreams of what I would do if suddenly a multimillionaire. It’s the little smile that says “imagine?!” when the man behind the counter wishes me “good luck.”
I bring my ticket back to my apartment, weight it under a picture of my dog for good luck, and fall asleep a couple of nights with the dream of waking up to the most amazing surprise. What would you do if you won the lottery is perhaps the most tantalizing question you can ask yourself. It’s the question that fuels the habit.
I am not going to go into the specifics of who I would tell and how, or what I would do immediately after winning, or what I would want from my life in the long-term once money is no longer an obstacle. That’s for me to sustain myself on and for you to never find out. I am however trying to explore the reason that this became a steady habit of mine within the last year.
I have a job now that I am very much looking forward to beginning. I have a nice apartment that I can (kinda) afford. I have means enough to pursue my passions in addition to pursuing a paycheck. The problem is, we’ve been conditioned to realize there is always more. Especially in a big city, where one can brush up against different tiers of wealth on a daily basis, it’s hard to ignore what you don’t have, which, to be honest, is a problem. I have a problem, you probably have a problem, etc. Even those who reach a new standard of living are always pining for what more there could be. Thanks capitalism!
So I believe I have chosen the lottery as the most passive way to pursue what our society has branded as the ticket to all happiness: money. For $104 a year, I have the slimmest of odds to find myself on Easy Street. And yes, maybe I am equating myself to Tantalus, that poor bast**d, but I think above it all, playing the lottery is dream fuel. And dreams are the greatest.
I’m not trying to force you into playing the lottery. I just find it interesting that at one of the most formative points of life, I am spending money I cannot spare, asking for Chance to decide my life for me. What a concept.
Speaking of interesting concepts… I was a little late to this, but I just finished Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari, and I believe it to be required reading if you want to properly live on this Earth. So if you don’t spend the money on a lotto ticket, spend it at your local bookstore for this gem. I’ll leave you with that.