Mega million? I have a lot of nothing
Mega million? I have a lot of nothing
Mega million? I have a lot of nothing
A customer buys Mega Millions lottery tickets in Arlington, Virginia, on October 22.
Photo:
erik s lesser / epa-efe / rex / Shutterstock
With the Mega Millions lottery jackpot at a record $ 1.6 billion, I am tempted to buy a ticket. But I will not. As Angelo tells Escalus in "Measure for Measure," "It's one thing you must try, Escalus, another thing to fall for."
The Mega Millions hype is omnipresent and inescapable. As the jackpot grows, so does the coverage invariably. When the media's accomplices asked them what they would do with their winnings, the hopeful players prepare a series of extravagant splurges, wishes of the wish list and other cake dreams in the sky, all suddenly possible thanks to a magnificent blow of Kramdenesque. Of luck.
I'm not buying yet. My reluctance has nothing to do with the odds, astronomically stacked against me, and everything to do with an almost forgotten poet named Albius Tibullus.
About 2050 years ago, in the last days of the Roman Republic, the young Tibullus wrote love poems in Latin, many of them chose his lover and pseudonymous inspiration, Delia. (His real name was Plania.) Little is known about Tibullus. We do not even know his full name. In total, only a few dozen of his poems are existent.
However, in his first poem, Tibullus captured the essence of the revered frugality of Rome before the Empire in a three-word phrase. Rejecting the desire for wealth, he describes himself as contentus vivere parvo- "content with living a little". In this elegant elegy, the poet does not criticize both the riches that others seek through military campaigns or challenging the seas as commercial merchants, but they exalt the joy of leading a simple and carefree life. where having enough is satisfying. Tibulus, farmer and poet, lived on a plot of land that was once large and now small. Much of his property, according to the poem, had been confiscated. (If you thought that the Marxists and the progressives invented the idea of redistribution, you give them too much credit).
However, Tibulo delights in his modest circumstances. While he knows that the gods will give him a good harvest and that Delia will cry for him at his funeral, he is, in his own words, satisfied.
What journalists and Mega Millions ticket buyers gasp can not appreciate that they enjoy an unimaginable wealth in the time of Tibullus, or even a few decades ago, by virtue of living in the richest nation in the history of the world. They carry handheld computers and have the ability to communicate with people thousands of miles away in an instant, often at no cost. Those of us of a certain age still remember a time when we changed the tapes of our typewriters and movies in our cameras, adjusted our watches, passed the pages manually, watched movies in a full cinema, played instruments that did not connect, He bought our clothes in buildings called "clothing stores," and we paid per minute to talk to our friends over the phone, glued to the walls. The miraculous improvements in medicine have extended our lives significantly, rewarded us, reduced our pain and made mere existence happier than ever.
For these reasons and another 1.6 billion, and with a gesture of assent to the old Albius Tibullus, I am passing the drawing of Mega Millions. I won the lottery the day I was born.
Mr. Opelka is a composer of musical theater and lyricist.
Appeared on October 23, 2018, print edition.
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ORIGINAL ARTICLE THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
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