Let’s Just Say, I Won the Lottery

Yesterday, my friend and I tried playing the lottery. While looking up how to go about it, she put it to me, quite simply, as though it were an ordinary question with an ordinary answer, what I would do if I woke one morning to find that fortune, in all her unpredictable generosity, had smiled upon me. And though I gave a response in passing, I have since found my mind returning to it, as one might linger at the edge of a dream too beautiful to abandon too quickly.

Let us suppose, then, just for a moment, that I did win the lottery. I do not imagine I would celebrate in any grand or public fashion or make loud declarations. There would be no restless display of sudden wealth. Instead, I believe I would quietly disappear.

I would go to a country where I have no digital footprint and my presence draws no attention, a place untouched by the noise I have come to know too well. A place of so much beauty, almost unreal landscapes. The kind I often pause to admire on facebook, where waterfalls fall and streams run alongside homes. You just know almost immediately that the air itself is kinder. There, I would find a house. Not a mansion, but a home of great peace.

It would sit within its surroundings, neither disturbing nor competing with nature, but existing in harmony with it. In the mornings, I imagine the soft murmur of water weaving through my thoughts before I even open my eyes. The light would spill through open windows, uninvited yet always welcome.

And outside, oh, outside, there would be life. I would plant flowers of every kind I have ever admired from afar in thoughtful arrangements, allowing each bloom its own space to breathe and to be. Colours would live there, soft pinks, deep reds, name them, blending into one another like a painting. Beside them, I would grow food. Not out of necessity I suppose, but out of a desire to nurture something with my own hands. To watch it begin as something small, and slowly become something sustaining. There is a kind of fulfillment in that which I so hunger for.

My family would not be forgotten, no. But they would see me only once in a very blue moon. This won’t be out of the distance of the heart, but out of a need to preserve something I fear the world too often takes from us, stillness. I would visit, I would love, I would return, I would share. And in between, I would exist in a space that belongs entirely to me. Away from the relentless movement. Away from the unending demand to be more, do more, become more. For once, I would simply be.

Also, very importantly, I would buy into Hive and stake it, not under my name, but within an account that carries no identity, or expectation. From there, I would spend my days, coffee in hand, the orchestra of nature surrounding me, scrolling through communities, reading the words of strangers who write with honesty, effort, and of course heart. And I would support them.

Those small accounts, often overlooked, creating beauty in corners of this space few care to explore. I would use what I have to lift what they do, to remind them, in my own way, that their voices are seen, that their work matters. It would be my occupation, if one could call it that. And perhaps, in that imagined future, I would finally understand something I have long suspected, that true wealth is not found in abundance alone, but in the freedom to choose how calmly one wishes to live.

So let us say, for a moment, that I did win the lottery. Not to escape the world entirely, but to find, within it, a quieter way to belong.

^{PS:all these, would I do with the loml. This is also my second attempt at writing like Charles Dickens. I kind of love the writing style.}

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