A winning ticket ?

Words. A mother.

A winning ticket ?

Tonight, my dad, my mom and I were having dinner (like every night, actually). Nothing out of the ordinary.
We were talking about this guy (we live in France) who has won several million of euros at the lottery.

We've all heard stories of lottery winners, rock stars, heirs and heiresses, and professional athletes becoming millionaire morons who wake up rich but are broke by nightfall. — Robert Kiyosaki

We were wondering how would be our lives if we had this “luck”, as we called it. Even with only one million. We would stop working, start travelling, buy lot of stuff… opportunities we always wished for in the end.

But can money buy happiness ?

We have seen many stories on TV where these people, suddenly the wealthiest, became insane. Money made them become crazy. Different.
This “luck” destroyed their life, more than what it has brought them.

But money does make a difference to happiness in poorer countries. If you don’t have enough for some degree of reasonable comfort, you can expect to be pretty stressed and unhappy. But once people reach a certain threshold (once they don’t have to worry about a roof over their heads or having enough to eat), extra money makes very little difference (of course, even in wealthy countries, there are some people who don’t have these basics).

I agree that money does offer a means to make people happy, but true happiness runs deeper than the possessions. When you can see poor people huddled together to keep warm and sharing what little they have to survive, that’s love, which brings about happiness. Their situation doesn’t make them happy and money would make it better, but the root of their happiness stems from love. On the flip side, if you have a wealthy family who can’t get along, where is their happiness? The money’s there but where’s the love? The same place their happiness is… out the door… while their money sits in the bank.

Too many people spend money they earned… to buy things they don’t want... to impress people that they don’t like. –Will Rogers

Here we were, debating. When my mom just suddently stopped talking. And she just told me, while she was looking at my dad sitting at the end of the table:

“I don’t mind, I already have my winning ticket.”

She was talking about me. I was her winning ticket. I am.

I can’t even explain by words what I felt at that moment. I had to leave the room because the tears were coming to my eyes.

Earlier this day, we had an argument. About stupid things, of course. As usual. But I was so angry against her. These few words, unexpected, took away a heavy weight on my shoulders.

No matter what you may say, but I won the lottery a long time ago. I won the opportunity to have a roof, food, tremendous opportunities for my future … and the love of a family.

And I love them back.