Last week I was at an appointment and the person I had the appointment with was chatting with another employee. They were discussing something that sounded pretty juicy from the little bit that I heard. Naturally, being the nosey person that I am, I asked outright was was being discussed.
Apparently, a former friend of these two individuals had won the most recent lottery drawing. Yes, he won the grand prize which was $11 million dollars. Yes, 11 million. After taxes, this came down to about 3.8 million. Putting this in an ING direct account would pay out about $128,000 PER YEAR in interest alone. We all just sat there and shook our heads. It turns out, the winner is not the nicest guy and his employees are not at all fond of him. His owns a business and his employees actually read about his lottery winning in the local paper. The day after and everyday since he has come to work as usual and not said a word to anyone about it. Before winning he was incredibly wealthy to begin with, as was his wife. They already own a beautiful residence in Manhattan. This is a person who will never have any financial worries for the duration of his life. Just imagining this really boggles the mind, especially in today's state of economic Armageddon.
After taking it all in, we just sat there and wondered aloud as to how this would change our own lives. Travel, paying off debt, buying a beautiful home, etc. The usual things came to mind but then ....what? did you ever let your mind wander like this? It was kind of telling. We all realized that we would still have to have some sort of purpose in life, i.e. work. Of course not for someone else but something on our own. It's funny that it only took a short while for us to come to this conclusion. The temptation to not do anything and just travel, shop and be lazy was there but even with a large amount of money none of us could imagine being satisfied with not having a purpose to get up for in the morning.
My own wish would be to found an organization that would be sort of an "adopt a grandparent" type of program. Through my career experience the saddest thing I see on a daily basis is lonely elderly people. There is a huge need for some sort of social support network. This is evident in all the former patients of mine who still call me to chat long after I have discharged them from therapy. My own Aunt is a prime example of this. She is pretty much alone and wishes for someone to do things with. To fill this void she goes shopping on a weekly basis with her sister. That shopping is something that doesn't fulfill her and actually hurts her financially in the end. I am convinced that if she had a person who wanted to spend time with her the shopping would not be such a big part of her life. (I feel this way with shopping in general anyway, shop a lot=filling a void).
Anyway, after this mental exercise we all came to the conclusion that it shouldn't take winning the lottery to really live your life and be a better person. Real life makes a lot of things very hard and not as feasible as it would be if there were unlimited funds available but the principle should be the same. Why wait for good fortune to really live? Even coming up with one goal, a reachable one like losing weight and exercising regularly for better health, or calling someone you haven't spoken to in a long time just to say you are thinking about them. Those are achievable and have great value if done with sincerity and consistently.
That said, I'm still going to spend $1 a week and keep my fingers crossed!
That's all for now! :)
2 comments:
I agree, as we lead longer lives, there are many elderly who are left in institutions where they are pretty much forgotten. It may be that all of their family have already passed away, or perhaps they have little or no assets left. For this reason I started an "Adopt a Grandparent" program for the holidays 5 years ago to provide gifts and visitors to our local county home. For more info on how you can help- http://budurl.com/adoptagrandparent
That is so wonderful of you Nancy! I am sure you are making a lot of people very happy with your mission. I wish more people were sensitive to this issue, we're all going to get there someday. I weill definitely check out your website, thank you for doing what you've done!
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