I survived suicidal depression because of hope. But it’s a funny thing. It can help you through something. But it can also poison you. Wanting things you can’t have, that are only the product of luck, that can be a poison when you don’t get what you want.
I have a pile of lottery tickets I bought over 2024. I never expected to win, but I did so for two reasons: 1) a scientific experiment and 2) an experiment in hope.
When I lived in Eugene, next to Ferrel’s (sp?), a famous ice cream restaurant that has gone the way of the doe-doe (sp?), I decided to start saving my spent toilet paper rolls. I did this after using up my first roll of toilet paper roll. I don’t really know why I did it, I just had this idea of tracking time with my “toilet paper clock.” And so every time I ran out of a roll of toilet paper I put the spent roll on the shelf above the toilet and watched as they built up over the coming year. When I moved I counted them—I just wish I remembered the number. It must have been about twenty.
In the same way, I decided to purchase lottery tickets in 2024 at about the same rate as I have over many years of my life based on the one “realistic” hope I’ve had for years, that I could win the lottery. Win the lottery equals paying off my mortgage, paying off any other debts, being able to afford decent health care, on not being under the yolk of a society that is literally forcing me to work to death (I believe I will likely die at my desk some day, shortly after updating my “out of office” to say I’m not feeling well—and yes, this will likely happen based on current and past conditions). I have every ticket from the last year to my left on the desk. They equal $125. They don’t include the one or two I’ve won on, those equaling about $4 in profit. So much for hope, right? But if I’m to understand it, for some un-understandable reason I can use my loosing as tax rights. WTF? Right?