I have a couple of friends who like to play lotto fantasies with me. Just occasionally, over a glass of wine, we’ll talk about what we’d do if the lotto fairies waved their magic wands over us and removed the need to acquire money.
If it sounds like childish escapism, that’s because it mostly is childish escapism, but it can also a useful mental exercise. What would your life be if money wasn’t an imperative? Would it be utterly unrecognisable? Or would it be much the same, but with nicer stuff?
For most of us the first thing is a house. More than 40% of my income goes on rent, which officially puts me, along with many other Australians, in housing stress. It’s relentless and grinding, the magic wand waving that away is a constant in my lotto games
But after the immediate needs, the big question in lotto fantasy games is what would you do with you time if you no longer have to trade it for money?
For the first time in my life I can honestly say that I would stay in my job, but there’s been other times I’d have left work so fast you’d think I’d been fired out of a cannon. Other players of the lotto game have told me they’d stay in their job, but only part time, maybe 3 days a week. They want more time to do the things they can’t do because of work, but they get something from their job that matters more than money. Sometimes it’s a sense of identity, and a feeling of respect or self-respect. Sometimes it’s the social aspect, “I’d get bored or lonely if I didn’t see lots of people every day”. Other people find a genuine sense of achievement and satisfaction in their work that they wouldn’t want to give up.
The out-of-a-cannon group only work because they have to, and again, the exercise in “what would you rather be doing” can be useful. Would you pack a bag, jump on a plane and spend years exchanging money for experience? Would you go back to university and spend the rest of your life being a perpetual student? Would you retire to a luxurious couch and while away your days devouring all the books you’ve never had time to read? Would you put a desk in a sunny attic and write books for others to read? Would you spend hours every day at the gym and become a fitness demon competing in triathlons around the world? Would you have a baby? Buy a huge house and fill it with foster children? Set up an artist studio and paint all day? Would you buy a block of flats, move all your friends in and turn your life into your very own Melrose Place? Would you stay in your house, your city, your country? Would a fabulous new wardrobe be a large feature of your lotto life, or would you spend your days in shorts, scampering around a shiny new yacht? Do you think about having plastic surgery? Wonderful jewellery? Marvellously intricate model train sets? Would you renovate, redecorate or relocate? Would you open your own restaurant? Buy a farm and fill it with rescue animals? Would you start a charity to care for the homeless? A half-way house to help ex-prisoners start a new life? Would you become a lady who lunches and live a guilt free hedonistic life?
The options are endless, but they all provide an insight into the life you aspire to having, the one that often gets lost in the day to day requirements of modern living.
I remember one slightly dark lotto game with a friend of mine who told me he would leave his wife if he was swimming in riches. He doesn’t stay with her for her money – he earns far more than she does – but the daily grind for both of them is already difficult enough, neither of them could really afford to live alone. In his fantasy world however, she’s not there.
Such fantasies are useful, not just as escapism, but as a way of finding out what satisfaction is missing from your life. Work can give us many wonderful things, but it rarely gives us everything. Sometimes it can feel like it takes too much of our lives, and clarifying the things we feel we’re missing out on can help find a way to achieve that satisfaction without the intervention of the lotto fairies. And those things don’t always need intervention from the lotto fairies to be a part of our lives. Sometimes, just the reminder that those desires are there, as yet unfulfilled, can be enough. Which is where the magic lotto game can be useful.
What work would you do if you didn’t have to work?