Have you ever bought a lottery ticket? Indulged in some get-rich-quick scheme where the odds are never really in your favor but signed up anyway?

I once bought a powerball ticket,

Powerball is one form of lottery where you need to match 7/7 numbers right out of the 35, and also a single number out of 20 to win the jackpot. The odds of hitting the jackpot is some abysmal 1 in 135 million

and within a day made a self declaration

I will not buy lottery tickets ever again!

As one could guess, I didn’t win anything.

It wasn’t the loss of money that made me avert from buying lotto tickets any further. Instead it was a principle from my young and naive days, resurfaced from the depths of other life-ly things that built my conscience as time toiled on as I grew older.

It all started on a meek winter Thursday afternoon shift, I told my colleague that I purchased a powerball ticket.

It is a hundred and twenty million dollars! I exclaimed.

…

But why?

He questioned, as we looked each other in the face in rhetoric. With a subtle smirk and a grin on his face, he went on

Doesn’t this job pay well enough?

Almost breaking out a smile as he continued his preposterous probing.

*BEEP BEEP BEEP*….*BEEP BEEP BEEP*

Our bleak conversation about pay had cut short as our pagers went off simultaneously.

(CODE STROKE: EMERGENCY DEPT. ETA 10 mins, patient en-route with AV)

I exasperated:

If you see me walk away middle of the code, you know I won the lottery.

as we quickly ran down to make ourselves available for poor patient to be assessed and treated. The time went by quick, took us nearly 40 minutes to tackle the stroke. We both sighed in relief as the patient was in window for treatment and a crisis was averted.

It was a good code right?

I asked my colleague as we debriefed on our way back to our office.

Yeah! He said, would have been better If the damn computers did take so long to scan the images.

We perhaps had six similar stroke codes that shift, and it was busy but it had its ebbs and flows. Another job well done, another day turned to dust.

While I was teasing about leaving work if I were to win the lottery, I knew I wouldn’t. Most definitely not in middle of the shift.

My conscience would eat me alive!

Clocked out and checked out, I had to move onto the dreaded activity of commuting back home.

Aren’t we supposed to have invented teleportation by now? Eugh this is such a first world problem.

For me, the steed of choice is my car, waiting diligently lifeless and listless, some two hundred meters away from where I work.

This provided an opportunity for a quiet walk, it is either a walk of fame or walk of shame, a job well done for the day, or a job that could have been done better.

Work always leaves an impression, Every. Single. Day.
There will not be a day without reflection on the sequence of events, consciously or sometimes uneven unknowingly. But it happens for everyone, that much is known.

The night was cold, damp, the rain had soaked the roads wet through the evening, all that was left was a drizzle and a cool breeze. As I was walking back, I thought back to myself,

Would I actually quit working in medicine if I won the lottery.

Maybe?

I pondered, and as I went all J.D. from Scrubs with a monologue, a thunderously loud honk hushed my thoughts and shut down all the ambience in the street.

As I snapped back to reality and my surroundings, I noticed a fellow healthcare worker trip and fall off their bicycle, nearly getting run over by the honking bus.

A lot of people rushed to the person’s aid but the cyclist was fine, it was a slippery surface, and they tripped over a curb as they overshot with the turn.
There was a huge sigh from the panicked bus driver and everyone around. The cyclist got up, unscathed physically, left with an ego check that can be noticed even from a distance.

An embarrassed expression, apologetic and thanking the concerned bystanders, before riding away.

All it took was probably a two second difference to avoid the disaster.

If the bus driver wasn’t held up by line of people wanting to dodge the rain at the previous stop, perhaps they would have had less time to react and slam the brakes.
Or perhaps if the cyclist wasn’t working through a double shift, trying to rush to their dog that has been alone for the past twelve hours, they probably wouldn’t be so ambitious with their rally cycling talent in damp conditions.
Or perhaps if it didn’t rain so much, then maybe they wouldn’t slip despite hitting the curb.

As these events unfolded and karma sorted its shit out. I went back to my thoughts and also complete this infamous walk back to the car.

What was I thinking about anyway? Oh right quitting if hit the jackpot?
Nah, I wouldn’t quit. I would go part time I reckon.

I concluded as I reached the car.

As the perilous drive back home through the wetlands and the asphalt began, I was taken back to an old philosophy of mine.
There was a time, we are talking, the “young, wild and free” time of life. (Yes, the university life).

I was adamant that I wouldn’t gamble.

I did not enjoy the aspect of gambling, the concept was alien to me.

Gambling: knowing that I am pooling my hard earned money, with other people’s hard earned money, and wishing that majority of the people lose, so I COULD WIN all of it and leave nothing behind.

While I know, no one would maliciously wish for other people to lose, at least not the majority of us, but when I want to win in a lotto, that is exactly what I am indirectly wishing for.

So why, now? what made me buy the ticket? Was it the glorious marketing from lotto companies, showing a person having an early retirement or is it mental fatigue crying for a break from work and other worldly commitments? I will not be able to pin it down.

As the medical people type up a discharge summary, when things are too convoluted to explained by a single unifying piece of information, Cause of a patient’s presentation: “multi-factorial”

Why buy a lotto ticket now?
It was multi-factorial.

But interestingly the whole day’s experience made me realize, it all could have been a butterfly effect.
Winning the lotto, is perhaps also a butterfly effect, just how sometimes falling ill can also be due to a butterfly effect.
Now I am not embarrassed to admit, I lost a sum close to 50 dollars on the single draw of lotto tickets. But I will go back to my old habit of not delving into gambling.

I do not wish to be part of a system that lives off stealing money from the masses to pleasantly surprise one, or sometimes a small group of people.

The proportion of people who buy lotto tickets are not one offs but rather frequent flyers. The more you lose, the more you want to buy into the idea of winning the lotto.

As if some miraculous bookkeeper is watching how religious you are with buying tickets every week and is going to tip the odds in your favor in the next draw, the coming week.

That is not wishful thinking, no, that is just a fantasy.

Buying a lotto ticket on a previous, doesn’t improve the odds of the next draw. Don’t need a to be mathematician to realize these events are mutually exclusive probability tests (1 in 135 million)

Some paths are better not explored and some stones are better left unturned.
Paradox! This will lead to a permanent rift in the coming series of events.
But so long as mind remains clear, whether it be illness or millions,
Momentary happiness, grief or bleakness.
A clear conscience is all I ever want to witness.

TL:DR?

Life is too uncertain for us to pin point cause and effect of every misfortune or good fortune. It has happened most definitely due to consequences of our and also our surroundings actions.

The end outcomes are imaginably tough to control, the thing that can be controlled is having a clear conscience on paths chosen to be explored but also on choices that have best left ignored.