If I were to tell you that I had just won
the lottery jackpot and was giving up English teaching and blogging in order to
live out my life on a beach in Thailand, how would you feel? Very probably you would experience a wave of
jealousy or even hatred. “Why did he get
all the luck?” you would think.
Luckily for you, and unfortunately for me,
I haven’t won the lottery jackpot. So
you needn’t feel jealous.
Perhaps we should feel happy to see someone
else receive a large slice of good fortune.
But it seems so unfair. Why can’t
the good fortune be spread around evenly?
We could be happy to see someone being lucky if we knew that we were due
an equal amount.
What would the world be like if God spread
the fortune around fairly and equally? If someone won the lottery jackpot, you would
be happy for them to enjoy their good fortune because some time in the future
they would get an equal slice of bad fortune.
Perhaps they would get sick or hit by a car.
For the ancient Greeks and Romans, Fortune
was a goddess who could turn human lives upside down by a sudden change of her
favour. I have been reading a Roman
writer, Plutarch. He wrote about an
ancient dictator of Sicily called Dionysius.
He was “born and educated in the most splendid court that ever was” and controlled Sicily for ten years after the
death of his father. But he was defeated
in battle and taken to Corinth as prisoner after watching his wife and children
killed and thrown into the sea.
According to Plutarch, “Upon the news of his landing at Corinth, there
was hardly a man in Greece who had not the curiosity to come and view [him],
and say some words to him. Part,
rejoicing at his disasters, were driven there by mere spite and hatred, that
they might have the pleasure of trampling on the ruins of his broken fortune.“ The former dictator lived the rest of his
life as a common man in Corinth, “loitering about perhaps in the fish market or
sitting in a perfumer’s shop, drinking the diluted wine of taverns or
squabbling in the street with common women.”
So if you were given a set amount of luck
to spend by God, how would you spend it?
Would you live out your whole life, being neither very lucky nor very
unlucky? Or would you prefer a life like
that of Dionysius, having great fortune and great misfortune in equal amount?
I am going to stop buying lottery tickets
and try to be happy with my life as it is.
I don’t want to make Fortune angry by seeming greedy for too much.
Vocabulary:
a jackpot – a large cash prize in a game or
lottery
to be due something – to be entitled to get
something
a dictator – someone who controls an area
through force, not democracy or consent
spite – a desire to hurt, annoy or offend
someone
to trample on something – to walk roughly
over and crush something
ruin – the state of being destroyed or
falling into pieces
to loiter – to stand or wait around without
apparent purpose
diluted – mixed with water to make it
weaker
to squabble – to argue noisily about
something minor or unimportant
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