What You Bring To Wealth Counts

Tue., May 26, 1998

By Rebecca Nappi rebeccan@spokesman.com (509) 459-5496

As they stood in line to buy tickets for Powerball, the daydreams began spinning. I’ll quit my job. I’ll keep my job, but work part time. I’ll travel around the world. I’ll stay home and totally remodel the house. Whatever I do, I’ll be free, free.

Powerball is a massive lottery game; more than 20 states participate in the big jackpots. Powerball madness hit last week as the jackpot reached $194 million. Idaho participates in Powerball; Washington state does not. But many Washington residents crossed the state line for the chance to become millionaires. Looks like a suburban Chicago couple won, leaving in the dust millions of ticketholders who lost both money and daydreams.

It was eerie to watch Powerball madness unfold in the same week a 15-year-old cupid-faced boy turned mad himself and shot up his school. No easy answers explain why the boy did it. Or why other children in other schools have committed similar violence this past year.

Yet easy answers are behind both the charm and the danger of lotteries such as Powerball. On the surface, lotteries do good things for their communities. They provide easy money for states’ general fund accounts; Idaho uses some of its lottery money for schools. They are really a voluntary tax, because the chances of winning are laughable. Those participating in last week’s Powerball had an 80-million-to-1 chance of winning.

Still, hopeful daydreamers bought tickets. For a few bucks, they bought some fun, some camaraderie - many offices and friends pooled money - and they bought some precious moments of daydreaming and truth-telling. Pay attention to your daydreams to see how well your life is going. If you decided you’d keep much of the status quo upon winning, chances are you’re living a full life.

But psychic danger lurks in Powerball thinking, because some believe that money will solve all their woes. They believe that tons of money will help them deal easily with the hardness of life. Not so. Just read a few biographies of troubled rich people.

Suddenly becoming a millionaire, even 194 times over, cannot solve deep problems inherent in most human beings: problems of disconnection, shallowness, violence. Suddenly becoming a millionaire does not quench the hunger for more intimacy with others and more nourishment for the soul.

Perhaps the best lesson of Powerball is that most of our luck in life comes through hard work and honest introspection. In the end, money is often the least of it.

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