What I Learned By Not Winning The Lottery

If this is going up, that means I didn’t win the lottery. At least, not the jackpot. Having come to terms with that though, I can’t say it was all for nothing. After having bought the tickets, and even a few hours before deciding to buy, I did something I haven’t really allowed myself to do for a while. I dreamed. And it was nice.

I guess one of the things that has come along as baggage with me this year is an increasing amount of pessimism. It’s far too easy to allow yourself to fall into the gaps with everything going on in the world. You wake up, take your morning constitutional, have some breakfast, and if you’re lucky to have gotten that far it’s nice. But then you make the mistake. You open your social media feed. You check the news for the latest updates. You fold open the newspaper and even away from the screen, the world is just being terrible and showing you how much worse and crazier it seems to be for the next twenty-four hours. That’s when the crumbling starts. I mean hell, last night the president of my country publicly announced himself to be a nationalist. Forget just the struggle, the eternal internal screaming is real.

That’s sort of what started it. I started talking to people about a dream vacation I had come up with in my mind. A nice trip to northern Washington and British Columbia to just get a feel for the land. Then it came up. “How are you even going to pay for that? Win the lottery or something like that?”. Usually I’d find that as kind of demoralizing, but lately the snarky and rebellious voice in my head has been speaking up and thank god for that. I figured “I don’t know, maybe” and for once in a long while I finally decided to let myself think “Even if things don’t change, just what if…”. Then I started thinking of all I could do. Started out big, naturally; Canadian citizenship and a nice apartment in Victoria, secure my family for life, a Tesla or similar all electric vehicle. Then I started thinking smaller. I could finally get that tortilla press I’ve wanted for a while.

I know it’s no chance in hell that I’m getting it though. I talked with a friend about opening a cat sanctuary with a cat café. They ended up getting on the dream train with me, talking about how it’d be designed inside with the theme and fitting themed drinks and snacks. I realized though that sometimes, if you acknowledge that it won’t happen and not dream to plan but dream to dream, it can feel good to do so. It’s ten minutes now until draw time if anyone is keeping track. Dreaming without expectation is something I haven’t done in a while. I used to, but then pessimism and realism got their dirty paws on me. It became a game of trying to think of what could be as long as I can before I get shutdown by my thoughts and the thoughts of those around me. “What could be” though comes with a form of expectation. “What could be” is something that has an “if” after it, and that combination always ends with “why isn’t it?”. For me at least, I realize I should be thinking “What if”. It’s simple, rhetorical, without expectation. “What if” already has “if”, it’s just simply there. The lack of expectation helps create a lack of counterpart. It’s obviously not the same for everyone, but for myself at least it becomes a safe harbor for my imagination that hopefully I will remember for the future.

I’ll preface this by saying I know this isn’t how it happens with everyone. For those who this isn’t relatable to, I wish I could be you. For those this is relatable to though, well, I don’t really have to say anything I imagine. You get it. But even if nothing happens tomorrow, I just want to throw out this suggestion to you. Try to dream without expectation. If at all possible, ignore the voices saying it can’t happen, or asking you why it hasn’t. Just dream for dreams sake.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, it’s 7:59PM and I have a lottery to lose.