When I was young, our small town had a bike safety event for all the kids in town and a local bike shop from the next town over would give away a free bike. Every year I either they raffled off a new bike, and every year I never got picked. I came to realize that life just wasn't gonna be like that for me, and I'd just have to work and wait. Things were never just gonna fall in my lap.
But something about it always felt a little off. I used to think it was because I had been gifted many things: a great family, great friends, great wife, great dogs, great career, great experiences, etc. (also, I actually did win a $500 gift card once in a raffle, and in another raffle I won a deck of playing cards, and a distant relative once left me $900 in her will).
But, that explanation didn't seem quite right either, and I think tonight I finally realized what the lesson from that should've been:
You see, at the Richlandtown, PA annual bike safety event, there were like 50-100 kids all wanting that bike. Like any normal human, I had always assumed it was never in the cards for me to win that kind of thing. But the real lesson was that like most humans, it was never in the cards for the vast majority of us to win anything.
I had always thought it was a me thing, but in reality it was a "95% of us" thing. Most people don't win the lottery or get gifted cars/inheritances. For the vast majority of people, they have to work and wait.
The point I'm making isn't about the camaraderie. It's more about the fact that instead of always thinking things like "Oh, I'll never be the one to win at picking the next bitcoin", it's better to just realize that life is like that the vast majority of the time for most people, and that it's not specifically the universe singling me out. It's got much better things to do with its time than focus all its attention on me, but it's hard to realize that as a human.
No comments:
Post a Comment