Daily Prompt; You’re a Winner

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You’ve just won $1 billion dollars in the local lottery. You do not have to pay tax on your winnings. How will you spend the money?

Photographers, artists, poets: show us RICH.

Interesting prompt, I believe. In my opinion there are two ways to look at this. The dreams of living or the living in reality.

How many times have you sat in front of the television eagerly awaiting the lottery numbers to be called. Excitement filling you and some anxiety. Maybe a feeling of a little luck, makes your emotions taller than the tallest building in the world. You feel it, you can almost taste it. Your numbers you picked are going to be it.

Quietly, barely breathing you listen to each number called. If it is with you like it is with most people who play, one or none of your numbers are called.

Disappointment sets in. Hope disappears. The visions of that new sports car drives quickly a way.

Maybe after you spend numerous dollars each week and set yourself in front of the TV, you may get lucky. If you are truly full of luck you could be the real winner. And if you are that one in a million what will you do with your winnings? Will it be spent on charities, family, cars, houses, bills? It doesn’t matter to me. What is important to me is not how much you won, but how will it change you.

Will it make your ego soar? Will you give thanks to the one who made it possible for you to win it? I don’t know the answer to this. Lottery can be a great entertainment, I admit. I used to work in a gas station and I would see people spend almost their entire pay checks on beer and lottery. A few days later they would come in for gas complaining about how high-priced life is to live. How they only have a few bucks left until the next pay-day. That there freezer is empty. It is theirs and your choice to live any  way you wish, but remember, for every decision you make there is always a good or bad pay off along with it.

Now there is the other type of winner. It doesn’t necessarily even have to do with God. It has to do with your attitude in life and about life. How you feel about yourself. Do you wake up each morning being thankful you have one more day to make the best of it? If the sun is shining, you smile; and if it is cloudy or raining, you don’t gripe. Instead you instantly can think of something that needs to be done indoors for the day. And as you look at the brown grass, you realize that the rain is desperately needed.

Do you go to the fridge and get out food to fix a meal? Do you give thanks to anyone for being able to do this? Do you ever stop and ponder that maybe that old man/woman on the corner isn’t eating this morning because they don’t have enough money to buy food? Or maybe they have the money but no one has made the effort to take their grocery list to the store and along with their money get what they need? Maybe you feel generous enough that you can toss in a couple extra cans of soup for them.

Have you ever thought how darn lucky you are that you can still make the choice whether to do this or that; to be laid back or dig into some project that has been calling your name?

Some people wake up in the mornings and don’t know what day it is. Is it night or even day? Age and sickness ravish this world. You and me are lucky enough to still be able to walk, think and talk.

Now to me, as long as I have my bills paid and food on the table, I consider myself blessed and rich. Of course a few extra jingles in my pocket would be nice. A drivable car is very nice. To have one car in our driveway is awesome. But many times I see two, three or more sitting in one driveway.

We all have multiple TV’s, more than a land line phone, almost everyone has a cell phone on top. Riding lawn mowers, snow blowers, leaf blowers have replaced manual work. Our lives are so easy compared to fifty years ago,and for some reason we still keep wanting more.

This is human nature. I don’t blame anyone for feeling this way at all. We can’t help ourselves. But we need to realize how good we have it today. We are walking, talking, breathing, making choices, dressing ourselves, loving, hating, eating, reading, hearing, smelling, touching. We are rich in these areas and yet we don’t realize it each day when we get up.

So there are two riches in life. Maybe you are the one in the million that has both riches. Maybe you feel you have nothing to feel rich about. But I bet if you reread this again, you will discover you may be the richest one of all.