Shige Essay n.48 - Fortune -
AOI HITORIGOTO N.48 -Fortune-
MYOJO 2010.06
Kato Shigeaki
"I'm fine because I don't win at the lottery".
This is my pet theory, I think it's better to not win at the lottery. If I ever win and it's over 100.000 yen I'd feel uneasy.
I'm convinced that something such "Fortune" exists. In reality, I've always been lucky in my life. Being born from my parents and being blessed by an environment like the one where I grew up is nothing else but luck.
Besides, I believe that it's possible to accumulate the good luck.
If something unpleasant happens and you complain with your friends you will end with saying something like: "Oh well, let's say this was my saving for when I'll go to heaven*". Like if your luck expanded.
to search luck it happens that you have to meet somebody you don't want to meet and that you have to go where you don't want to. I don't quite understand where's the good side in this, though.
This is a story I heard once, it seems that Beat Takeshi (Takeshi Kitano) never plays Janken. The reason is that he always wins. Since he knows that he will win, he doesn't want to reduce the luck he accumulated by playing Janken. I don't know if it's true or not but for me this explanation is weirdly satisfactory. Fortune is exactly like this.
To me, lottery is the same of that Janken. I don't have any confidence to win at all but I think that if you ever win 3 hundred millions Yen then nothing as good as this can happen to you again. In a novel by Satou Shougo-san "Mi no ue hanashi" the protagonist wins at the lottery with a ticket he bought for a friend, his life after that has an awful development. It realistically pictures how this victory can make your life go crazy. In this way, I think that in exchange for a winning lottery ticket you will lose something else for sure.
This is a story with a different character but this happened in a Yoko Ono-san's art show.
In the attendance of an art museum there were this art exhibition with stones piled up: on the right side there were only the ones for the happy things, on the left side only the ones for the sad ones. Looking at those "mountains" from a distance they looked quite of the same heigh.
We can talk about fortune in the same way of this. The volume of the good luck and the volume of the bad luck are usually equal.
Like this, after winning a big prize at the lottery all one's own bad luck remains.
If this theory is right, there are few people who can stay fine after winning 3 hundred millions at the lottery. They are only the people who spent their lifes with a misfortune that can correspond to 3 hundred millions yen.
This is why I seldom buy lottery tickets.
I don't have any interest in lottery or gambles. When I bought them I never won but if one day I'll win for mistake I feel that it will be like receiving a bomb of bad luck.
Yes, I'm already enough blessed. I don't want to be greedy.
"Narubeku chiisana shiawase to
narubeku chiisana fushiawase
narubeku ippai atsumeyou
sonna kimochi wakaru deshou"
(The most little happiness and
the most little unhappiness,
let's gather it all the more possible,
do you understand what I mean?)
THE BLUE HEARTS "Jounetsu no bara"
We can't live only with happiness. We can't do it neither only with unhappiness. If you want to be happy maybe you have to dive into misfortune at least once. If it's a "little unhappiness" you can bear it.
The whole essay turned to be a criticism to the lotteries but this is not what I wanted to mean. From the beginning there is no necessity to set up lotteries. Lotteries are dreams. It would be great if we can buy as many dreams we want. Even if in reality we never win maybe just the feeling of thinking that we can do it it's a "little happiness".
"Even if you said all this~ I wish I can win! Why do you have to always break the atmosphere?!"
To you who are reading and complaining like this. I have something good for you.
A 300 yen bill.
Isn't it good as "Saving for the heavens"?
*This "Saving for the heavens (= Ten no chokin)" is a proverb, I guess. I think it's meant as to keep something for when you'll have to go to heaven. No idea how to properly translate it in English, though ^^"
Click to viewHe's too good to be true. I'm speechless.
And OMG don't mess with my head using as quotes one of my favourite japanese groups LOL
(I added the video of the song he used, The Blue Hearts are a wonderful group, if you're into old punk)
I truly love him ç ç