The day I won the lottery
Many of us are waiting to hit some sort of jackpot and win the lottery to feel happy and lucky. It's one of the few instances in life where everything hinges purely on luck.
Back in the day, dad used to buy a lottery ticket every week. To be sure, he wasn't a gambler or a spendthrift and wasn't pinning his hopes on getting rich easily and retiring. He actually hit pay dirt once and won 500 rupees on a ticket he bought. Not knowing what to do with our new found riches, we spent it all on dinner and two rounds of ice-cream, a big deal for us in those days.
At some point, the lottery got banned in our state and those tickets became a distant memory.
Many of us are waiting to hit some sort of jackpot and win the lottery to feel happy and lucky. It's one of the few instances in life where everything hinges purely on luck.
There are countless variations to what we deem as a 'jackpot' or 'winning the lottery'.
The dream job.
Some unknown inheritance we weren't aware of.
A windfall.
The near faultless boss/team.
The big buy over that makes us millionaires.
In the quest for this wait, we often overlook what we have, without us even asking for it.
Yet, I felt as if everyone around me had it better and easier. That I could have done more if the world had been kinder and fairer. With this kind of thinking, it's easy to go through life feeling that the world owes you something.
It took me a long time to realise that I had hit the jackpot big time and had refused to see it. Let me explain.
I have a supportive family, got a great education, got chances many others only dreamed of and never lacked any basic necessities.
Yet, I felt as if everyone around me had it better and easier. That I could have done more if the world had been kinder and fairer. With this kind of thinking, it's easy to go through life feeling that the world owes you something.
We all encounter challenges that we wish we never had to face. It always seems that someone else has it easier and better than us, that they somehow got lucky and we got dealt a bad hand.
I wish I could tell you it was some sort of an apple falling on Newton's head kind of a realisation. That I went from grumpy, negative and bitter to a blissful and positive person overnight. Far from it. Slowly but surely, it turned everything I had believed in up to that point on its head.
Counting your privileges and the opportunities you have been afforded is tough when you haven't trained yourself to focus on them.
In spite of the challenges you are facing, the bad cards you've been dealt, the lessons you haven't learned and the opportunities that you have missed, odds are, you have already won the lottery and are rich beyond measure.
All without even buying a ticket.