Winning life's Lottery

In the midst of the lottery fever a few days ago I was asked if I planned to buy tickets, try to get that $500+ million that was up for grabs.

Of course, regular readers know my answer. But for those who aren’t, the answer was negative. And for a few reasons. First of all, the below statistics show the odds of various events that might occur in our lives:

The actual odds of winning the Powerball $550 million jackpot was 1 in 176 million.

Here are some other extremely unlikely things that could have happened to you before you won the Powerball jackpot this week.

• Dying from a bee sting: 1 in 6.1 million.
• Dying from being struck by lightning: 1 in 3 million.
• An amateur golfer making a hole in one on a par-3 hole: 1 in 12,500.
• A golfer hitting a hole in one on consecutive par-3 holes: 1 in about 156 million.
• Hitting a deer with a vehicle in Hawaii, the state where State Farm says deer/verhicle collisions 1 in 6,267.
• Being struck by lightning over an 80-year lifetime: 1 in 10,000.
• Drowning and other beach-related fatalities: 1 in 2 million.
• Being attacked by a shark: 1 in 11.5 million.

But the larger and more important reason is that money is not – and has never been- an issue in my life. The issues in my life have always been learning how to live life on life’s terms. How to deal with my addictions.

At various points in my seventy plus years I’ve had money. But I never respected it. The money I had nearly killed me more than once. I never used it to help others. It was wasted in complete ego-driven self –centered dissipation.

I won the lottery the day I truly admitted I was an alcoholic. From that moment on my life has been a twenty two year series of blessings.