In “The Lottery of Life“, the School of Life explains how most people live in thinking they will one day be successful in their personal and professional lives, regardless of the odds – like a lottery – aren’t always in their favour. We tend to look patronisingly at people convinced they might win the lottery. But we often harbour equally misguided hopes for our romantic and professional lives.
We may not have a sense that we’re playing any kind of luxury and yet we are the lottery of life. We too are clutching tickets of various kinds and setting our sights on statistical near miracles even while we think we’re being utterly sober rational level-headed the crucial place where this lottery like behavior happens is in relation to our hopes of happiness into areas in particular love and work. …Our imagined society is likely to contain many more murders rabid dogs man-eating sharks and beautiful happy people than the real world does. Our mental map of how much contentment is possible defies all the known facts. If we could really see what love and work would be like for most other people, we would be so much less sad about our own situation and attainments. If we could fly across the world and peer into everyone’s lives and minds like an all-seeing angel, we’d perceive how very frequent disappointment is. How much unfulfilled ambition is circulating. How much confusion and uncertainty is being played out in private.
