The chances of winning the jackpot in a lottery is about 1 in 14 million. And yet our brain – that faulty walnut through which we assess reality – has the habit of holding out hopes for our personal happiness equivalent to winning the jackpot.
If we could really see what life was like for most people, if we could peer into everyone’s lives and minds, we would know how frequent disappointments are, how many unfulfilled ambitions there are, and how much confusion and uncertainty is being played out in private and how many breakdowns and intemperate arguments unfold every day.
Knowing this can comfort and reassure us and make us a little more forgiving towards ourselves for not having won the Lottery of Life.
I won the Lottery of Life when the Australian Immigration Officer in Bremen signed off with a flourish on my "Auswanderungsantrag nach Australien mit Fahrtunterstützung" - but that's a story for another day.
