How much money would it take to make you happy?
I’ve been watching a game show called Deal/No Deal, in which contestants routinely overreach themselves trying to win big bucks — up to $1 million, but more likely less, and maybe very much less after vaulting ambition draws them into some bad decisions. “How greedy and stupid!” I think. “Why not just settle for $50,000?” Why not? I’ll tell you why not.
Have you ever played a mental game with yourself by trying to determine just how big a lottery win would be “enough” to tidy up your financial landscape and bring you the blissful sleep of the debt-free? If you are like me, here is how it goes:
First I come up with a “modest” number that would cash out the credit card debt and cover the car loan, the kids’ orthodontist, and oh yeah, maybe Christmas and a more ambitious-than-usual family vacation. Almost immediately, however, that sum begins to look like small potatoes. It’s not that I’m holding out for a McMansion or a closet full of designer clothes, but it hits me that I haven’t even begun to address the problem of expensive future needs, like college costs. And maybe now’s the time to shop for a brand new car, complete with several blessed years of warranty protection.
And that would be enough. After all, even if we’re just playing a game, why be greedy?
But further complications crop up. Okay, it’s just a game, but really I should be reserving a good chunk of this imaginary money for charity. How could I live with the daily mail solicitations unless I gave pretty lavishly to some favorite causes? But I’d also like to make up for past omissions by putting away a lot more for retirement — and after all, the more secure my retirement situation, the more generously I could contribute to others, volunteer my time, help out family members.
Or maybe I should buy a house, cash on the barrel, to free up money now and prepare a retirement nest egg. Oh, and what about the IRS’s take?
At this point, when spending imaginary money has just become another source of anxiety, the diffident voice of sanity finally breaks through, and I recall why I do not buy lottery tickets. Because there is no number that qualifies as both enough money and not too much; no number that would render me at once worry- and guilt-free, confident of the wisdom of my choices, unharried by the legitimate claims of relatives, friends, and those in need.
This reality — that our “needs” and desires always outpace our resources — is so universally true for all cultures, times, and people that it is a common theme of fairy tales and fables, novels, and movies, and provides much of the dramatic tension of TV game shows. A standard game plan for the latter is to goad the game show winner of a small initial sum into risking it for a chance at something bigger and better — the famous “Door Number Three” of Let’s Make a Deal, for example, the mounting stakes of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire, or the increasingly unlikely grand prize of Deal/No Deal. Audiences for all these shows encourage the contestants to aim higher and higher, tempting fate because suddenly, a gratuitous $500 seems like chicken feed.
But there is no win high enough to fulfill all desires and ward off insecurity. And researchers into the relationship between prosperity and human happiness find that for the most part we quickly become accustomed to improved conditions. Besides, a rising tide of prosperity doesn’t do much to lift our impressions of how good we have it unless we also gain on the folks ahead of us. We tend to judge wealth comparatively, rather than absolutely. (That’s how my youngest can moan “Why do we have to be poor!” just because she is the last in her group to get a cell-phone.)
Fallen human nature being what it is, we are likely to play some version of the lottery game from time to time, temporarily suckered into the notion that a windfall would solve most of our problems. It wouldn’t, because ultimately God intends us to win something bigger even than what’s behind Door Number Three. The kind of security we seek ultimately has more to do with our heavenly home than with our earthly one.
Madame X works in Washington DC for the federal government. Because of her employer, she must write under a pseudonym.
