Have you ever dremt with becoming a lottery winner? In times of economic crisis lotteries increase their prominence because are offering something essential: illusion, hope, and faith in change, a chance to live in a better future and forget the present that becomes sadder every day.
But if we go back in history, would you be able to say when the lottery did begin? It is said that around the year 190 B.C., the Chinese were the first to establish a drawing model in which you had to choose five numbers between the 90 available. Later, in the eighteenth century in Italy, was played for the first time what was called La Primitiva Lottery. Later, at the beginning of the 18th century, the lottery came to Spain with Carlos III, in order to be used as a mean to raise funds. At that time started the developing of the modern lottery that spreads rapidly in the whole world.
Today the lottery is widespread and used throughout the world, there are different forms and countless variants and in the last years you can also play the lottery online, directly on the Internet.
But let’s try to give an in-depth look at the opportunities offered by the lottery. How much are the sums collected from the various lotteries?
On the contrary to what we may think, recently in a country like Argentina were collected prizes of about 13 million pesos while in Spain a few prizes defined gordos (fat) awards, have exceeded 300 million euros, and this is only 22,5% of the total raised from the sale of lottery of this country. A few years ago in Italy, the lottery offered one of the biggest prizes in history: 117 million euros. Of course, the rewards will increase with the increase of these figures.
Now let us draw the profile of the person who plays the lottery
Surprisingly, according to a recent statistic, those who earn a minimum salary of around 10,000 dollars a year invest more than 3% of their wage in a lottery among the many existing. Players are often people with a rather low cultural level, people who probably are not fully aware of what are the real odds of winning a lottery prize.
How change the life of people who win the lottery?
Also according to statistics, and whatever the amount of winnings, shortly after having collected the prize, 87% of the people who win the lottery return to the economic condition in which they were before winning or even go bankrupt, that mean they lose everything, including what they had before winning the lottery.
35% of them recognize they were living better before cashing the prize, while a winner out of four falls victim of alcohol, drugs and a bad lifestyle that turns him a miserable people.
This happens because the person who wins the lottery continues to be, essentially, the same person as before, but after winning finds in his hands a capital that doesn’t know how to handle and which becomes a source of stress. Handling a large amount of money without any experience supposes the need of new skills. If we’re not people open to change and flexible, we will hardly be able to cope with these new responsibilities.
Likewise, it will also change our interpersonal relationships. Others will see us as the “new rich in town” and will relate with us from this perspective. Probably they will become people who are demanding the most and accusing us of being selfish. If we are not experts in managing interpersonal relationships, these will become an additional source of stress.
People play the lottery because want to escape from a sad and frustrating reality, because they seek an illusion and want to believe in the possibility that life can change in an instant as if by magic. To them is easier to believe in the possibility to make a fortune without effort, rather than imagine how much they will have to work to achieve even a small part of their dreams.
Similarly, it is easier to give the responsibility of our frustrations to economic difficulties rather than recognizing that we’ve not been able to successfully undertake anything. So we think that an enormous amount of money will solve all of our problems, when in fact our difficulties are not due to the fact that we have more or less money, but rather to our incapacity to understand, manage and cope with life.
I hope that next time someone feels the desire to buy a lottery ticket he/her will think carefully on these issues to avoid becoming the next easy-rich man than in a few years loses everything and falls into despair.
