We call it a “dud” when we buy a lottery ticket and don’t win, or when we don’t get the expected results from something we’ve been looking forward to. Dud, next time. Dud, dud, won five dollars, dud, dud, dud, dud, won ten dollars, and dud again. Then we hear news of someone winning the first prize. We feel a bit down for a moment, but then we pick up another scratch-off ticket and start again. This is a story about lottery tickets, but it’s also a story about life.
Every morning, we start the day with various expectations. We hope the bus or elevator arrives quickly, we hope to eat something delicious for lunch, we hope it doesn’t rain, we hope our boss or client doesn’t bother us, we hope there’s no overtime, and so on. The list of daily expectations easily exceeds a dozen.
There are also special, non-daily expectations, such as wanting to increase our income, wanting to get together with friends for a drink, wanting to travel, wanting to feel better, wanting to meet someone special, wanting to get married next year, wanting to have a baby, wanting our parents to be healthy… These special expectations are like lottery tickets we scratch every day. Even if we get a dud every day, we keep going, scratching away in our minds every day.
If we combine our daily and special expectations, we scratch thousands of lottery tickets a year. How many of those thousands of tickets are duds? We can’t count them all, but we can all agree that most of them are duds. If most of the days were “wins,” we would go to sleep feeling incredibly happy. We might even have trouble sleeping because we’re so happy. How many days like that are there in a year?
Humans are beings who live by scratching the same lottery ticket every day until they win, repeating countless duds and occasional wins. That’s already difficult, and it’s not even fair. Some people get almost all duds, while others win consecutively. Sometimes, winning turns out to be the beginning of a disaster, and a dud turns out to be a blessing in disguise. We can’t just be happy when we win because we’re feeling down about losing, and we have more tickets to scratch, and we don’t know what to do or what’s going on, so we just follow what everyone else is doing. We try to be average. We try not to fall behind. So, eating chicken, traveling, getting drunk, and engaging in procreation seem to be the surest ways to feel good. We also have a twisted desire to do something new and strange, if conditions allow. An escape from the ordinary. We think, “At least there’s that thrill in this life of scratching lottery tickets.” Almost all people of all classes live like that. The same inferiority complex, the same superiority complex, the same old life. A vicious cycle. Is there no way out?
There is a way. The way out of this vicious cycle is surprisingly simple. Just live a life where it’s okay to lose. Even if, by chance, all the things you expect turn out to be duds, there is a life where you can feel a sense of “accomplishment.” A life with a meaningful direction. For example, if you bought a lottery ticket hoping to drink a mojito in the Maldives and got a dud, you’d feel depressed. You think, “I guess I can’t go after all.” But if you bought a lottery ticket with the desire to help someone who had a serious accident and needed a lot of money, you wouldn’t be sad even if you got a dud. When you approach someone attractive with ulterior motives, like satisfying your sexual desire or possessiveness, rejection can be humiliating and disheartening. But when you confess your feelings to someone you truly care about, even if they don’t feel the same way, you’ll experience a sense of relief. You would feel no regrets because you expressed your pure heart, and the other person would feel grateful to feel that sincerity.
Things that are okay to fail at are those filled with meaning, stemming from a selfless heart and a desire to help others. They’re not driven by selfish desires. The more we fill our lives with such endeavors, expectations, and ‘lotteries,’ the more we can find contentment even in failure. When we win, we’re happy; when we lose, we feel a sense of relief. That’s why we can be happy even if we fail every day. Whether we succeed or fail, we can at least feel a sense of peace.
All those expectations and ‘lotteries’ we have for a life that others will admire and envy ultimately lead to a life of constant failure and disappointment. Occasional wins only fuel addiction and heighten expectations, like a slot machine. However, a life with a clear purpose, to help others, even strangers, is worth living, even if it ends in failure. The effort itself is valuable and meaningful. Of course, when surrounded by such people, others who are self-centered might feel envious and resentful. But deep down, they know their own lives are filled with disappointment and ultimately end in death. They know it’s a meaningless life that’s lucky if it doesn’t lead to depression. That’s why we should live a life where we can feel at peace even when we fail.
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