There's something in the air as we await the drawing of the largest lottery jackpot in history. Can you feel it? The atmosphere is a bit thinner, as if everyone's breath is held in anticipation. Or as if we're all on tiptoes, awaiting something monumental and transformative. This ubiquitous hope.
The magic of it is that it could be any one of us who, in a matter of moments, will be morphed completely. Whose life will change unimaginably. Who will be suddenly whisked from the drudgery of reality to the scintillating ether of fairy tale.
We're all wishing, dreaming, trying not to get carried away in the excitement, reminding ourselves that the chances are so slim, but knowing that the chance is there. We're making secret lists of what we'd do with the money, what we'd buy, who we'd help, where we'd go, what we'd say when the camera crews came...
Hope is a wondrous thing. A buoy in the stormy currents. Is there a way to delay the drawing indefinitely, to maintain this sense of suspended animation, this moment of shared reverie?
I'm imagining a guy, an average Joe, who concocts some elaborate scheme to sabotage the drawing. The moment we've been waiting for arrives. The numbered ping pong balls start bouncing in the spheres like popcorn. The first five numbers are drawn, and then as the sixth ball is about to rise in the tube and be revealed, the room goes black. Joe has taken out the entire grid for miles around. When they catch him, he's a pariah, public enemy number one. We millions of people waiting to know if we'd won, we form a lynch mob. We want Joe strung up. And as they take him away, someone yells, why'd you do it Joe? And he shrugs, and he says, "We're all dreamers until that ball is drawn."
And it gives us pause. And he continues:
"It's the 'what if,'" he says. "That 'what if' is more valuable than all the money in the world. What if we had that 'what-iffiness' every day?! What if we dreamed daily of all we could do with everything we do have, rather than what we don't? Rather than waiting for some sudden act of God to change our lives, what if we took advantage of the act of God that already awarded us the jackpot of living?"
And we're kind of stunned.
"It's that old question of what would you be doing if you could be doing anything," he goes on. "Well what if you could be doing anything? What if you don't need to win a billion dollars to do whatever you are really meant, and really want, to do? Raise your hand if you would live exactly as you're living if your lottery ticket is picked?"
And there are no hands raised.
So you know what we do? We restore the electricity, but we leave the final number undrawn. We all take our tickets home, and we frame them, to remind us of Joe and of our potential.
Oh yeah, and what about all that money? We start a fund that Joe administers, evaluating case by case and doling out resources to those who dream and commit to their what-iffiness every single day.