You think you are going to win the jackpot, be the lucky one, no efforts. That is the problem.
I once heard a pretty story, and I want to tell you about it. Here it is: a 119 years old man from Siberia,
Russia, was asked what was the secret to live that long and to live such a healthy life.
The old man was able to wake up very early in the morning and get his own firewood from
the trees near his house. He still was a strong man.
The old man had a big family.
He had had 8 wives and 24 sons and daughters, more than 50 grandsons and granddaughters, 90 great-grandsons
and great-granddaughters. For this man, more than 170 persons now existed.
In answering the
question the old man said to the reporter that his secret was to smoke a lot and consumed a bottle of
vodka every day, to have sex with as much women as he could and to live without any concern.
The reporter was surprised and started to live the same way the old man did, hoping that he was going to
live as much as the Old Russian. He began to drink a bottle of vodka every day, enjoy the placer of the
finest cigars and to have intercourse with as much women as he could. He tried not to feel guilty about
it as the old man said to him.
Of course, in a few months the reporter´s health got
bad and he thought the old man lied to him. But he did not lie to the reporter, he said the truth. End
of the story.
Well, we are going to read between lines about the story just told. When
the reporter started to live the way the Old Russian lived, he became sick. I bet half of my blood
that if you start to live that way you´d become sick too.
Then, our Old Russian
Man lied to the reporter? No. He only was an exception. I took this definition from and on-line
dictionary of the word exception: "something excepted; an instance or case not conforming
to the general rule".
The old man was a case not conforming to the general rule. We
are not saying that nature doesn´t work with well established laws. There must be reasons to
one person could live the way the old man lived, but we are not interested right now in which they
are, we only want this story as an example.
Why do you think people of all kind buy a
ticket to the lottery? That´s right, it is not necessary to be genius to have the answer: To
win the first prize. Ask a mathematician how many chances do you have to win the lottery? Do you know
that it is easier to be hit twice in a year by a lightning than to win the lottery? In statistics, when
your chances have more than six zeros as decimals, the events are considered improbable.
People aren´t award of this fact, and even if they were they wouldn´t care. When a lottery
of any given country has accumulated 200 million dollars, the people who live in that country go crazy
buying as much tickets as they can. Who cares about the stupid calculations mathematicians do, they know
in their heart they are going to win the prize. But among the millions of tickets sold just one is the
winner and mathematics wins again, the probabilities say it was almost impossible to win and many events
could happen to you before you could win the lottery. Only one ticket wins. It is the exception to the
calculations of mathematicians.
But the success of those giant lotteries around the world
is based on the hopes of people who think that they are going to be that exception; millions want and
dream with winning the prize.
There is a common thinking patron among humanity, we all
believe we are the exceptions, and a few, just a few number really is.
The reporter
thought he could live the same way the old man lived because he believed he was an exception to
proved facts. If you drink as much liquor as the old man of the story did and live the life of
that man, it is mostly sure you are going to die younger and not otherwise.
Of course
it is beautiful to believe that drinking every day and having lots of women is the right way to live longer,
it is beautiful to believe that just spending a few dollars you are going to win millions because you
are the lucky man or woman who will win the price of the lottery, but facts tell us that we are not going
to be those exceptions, mathematics confirm so. If you want to keep believing in exceptions is your problem.
In the same way, the people who smoke cigarettes and cigars think they are exceptions to
the proven fact that those products give you cancer. We tend to believe without analyse facts.
We dream and sometimes life give us charity and we wonder why a few times get and why most of the
times we don´t get, because we tend to want a movie star life without giving nothing to the world.
Bill gates became the richest man on earth and he began very young to build his empire,
Steve Jobs built a tremendous company and now the guy who created the social network Facebook
is doing the same. Every young man thinks they are going to be the next one. But the names given
are a very small part of the bunch of people trying, they are exceptions, we don´t know
why, nature does, nature has an infinite intelligence, nature uses those exception for the development of the entire race.
Napoleon was a genius who using destructive ways transformed a whole continent.
We don´t agree his methods but it is evident that those cruel wars helped to a whole
continent to move forward and advance. Nature picks persons and events to advance. How many
people became crazy thinking they were Napoleon? Humanity needs to worship success, at the
same time each member of the race thinks he or she is going to be the next exception, the next genius.
So, we must not buy tickets to win the lottery and we must not try to be genius and make
a better person of ourselves? We don´t say that at all. We only say that living on the previous
knowledge our race achieved, is the fastest and safest way that you must follow to develop yourself.
If you, instead of studying hard and working hard prefer to buy every week a ticket to
win the first prize of your local lottery to develop yourself, we say you could spend your entire
life, because you are against the odds, but if you choose to keep the safest and fastest way to do it,
which is to work hard and investigate hard, you have better chances to do it. And please, if in your
country the lottery has accumulated in several millions, buy a ticket, who knows, but do not entrust
all your possibilities on that raffle.
We´ll meet you in our next lecture.
Let´s receive love and peace from all of us.
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