Are you sure?
This bookmark will be removed from all folders and any saved notes will be permanently removed.
Life's constant good is my winning ticket
Originally appeared on spirituality.com
When I learned that I'd won first prize in a raffle, you could have knocked me down with a feather—especially as I hadn't even bought a ticket. I'd given a donation to the local softball team here in Australia, and apparently one of the organizers had decided to thank me by entering my name in the draw. Now I had to decide what to do with my winnings—A$25 worth of petrol.
I’d never won anything before in my life. That's because I never buy raffle or lottery tickets. In addition, I grew up seeing the adverse affects gambling had on my father. His addiction to gambling eroded his marriage to my mother and broke our family apart. So as I grew older, I decided that betting, bingo, lotteries and casino games appealed to the hope that one might get lucky. I wanted to see the good in my life as entirely unrelated to chance.
Buying into the notion of good luck has a flip side—bad luck. To me, belief in either type of luck presumes life is nothing more than a series of random, unexpected incidents. If people get lucky for no apparent reason, that implies that good is accidental.
Enjoy 1 free Sentinel article or audio program each month, including content from 1898 to today.