Three winners had their chance and two of them stole the whole ball of dough from one. No such luck would win the entire $640 Million but a generous split among the three made each winner some $213 million, nothing to sneeze at.
I imagine roughly 95% of the 99% of us who'll never come close in approaching the vast wealth of the exclusive 1%, fantasized what that amount of money would buy them. It's like a 21st Century fairy tale where the golden slipper is the winning ticket and the winner is taken away in a dream coach to wherever their heart desires. Money will buy you anything, mostly fantasies, but a few generous donations thrown in here and there would alleviate the possible guilt one may experience having all that money given to you overnight for doing absolutely nothing to deserve it, unless you think standing in line waiting with others with the same intent is deserving.
The country has mega billionaires and they presumably have no guilt knowing they have that mush money. Afterall the either inherited their wealth or worked and schemed for years and years doing what they really believed in to finally have the 'big pay-off.' Nobody would begrudge anyone like that.. or shouldn't. We'd all feel pretty damn good if we hit it big with something we really enjoyed doing or knew someday would be really big.
So why do lottery winners by and large go broke by the 5 - 10th year? That is a statistic I recently heard. Not all, of course, but a fair majority. It's this attitude of entitlement... who actually deserves $640 million (before taxes)? We all work most of our lives, large numbers of us doing tasks that we wouldn't do if we didn't need a job. But we're no different from our fellow employees - we get up in the morning and go to work, normally 5 days a week, 8 hours a day, putting in our 40 hour week to get a paycheck which we use to pay our bills, our rent, our food and the following week we begin all over again. That's why this routine is called a 'job'... a not-so-friendly sounding three letter word that doesn't inspire much creativity in us. "Job"... dull word for a monotonous hourly task.
So why wouldn't most of us take a chance on escaping from that endless cycle that we have all become so accustomed to? When they payoff of the lottery win matches our fantasy of escape, we easily fall for it. Even tho most of us would never agree that 'we deserve' that much sudden wealth, it's all a fantasy and when the times get tough and the body is weary, a good fantasy is a great escape whether it be thru buy a lottery ticket, reading a fantasy novel or watching a movie where we can escape for a couple of hours. Methinks it's hu'man thing to seek out a path away from our doldrums. We do it when we really need it.
If the lottery is won, I don't think most winners really believe it even when they're presented the giant check with cameras clicking and people cheering for the winner. It's a dream that we really don't accept as reality at that moment. It's hard to take in the fact that one day we were broke (or near so) and the next we're as rich as we could ever hope to be. It's an extreme shift from one to the other... so extreme that many winners never really accept it but spend and buy the things they've always wanted or dreamed of... paying for it from this seemingly endless well of money. Who could ever go broke with that much money? It could never be imagined anymore than winning the lottery could be imagined. This allure, this incredible fantasy come true really could happen to someone we know someday... it could even be you or me. When our lives shift from first gear and shoot up to forth gear in 3.2 seconds, the speed of change may turn our fantasy back into a pumpkin before we know it. The ticket gone and the journey but a fond memory.
April Fools Day!
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cecil
4.01.12
Picture of the Week:
![Image](http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v56/mtmynd/SheHoldsCannaLillies-1-1.jpg)
photo: cecil