Life’s Lottery

Life’s Lottery

1985 6 June 16 Life’s Lottery (382) A truck driver, Stuart Kelly, from Ontario, Canada, once bought lottery ticket. Much to his astonishment, he secured the first prize of $13.9 millions, the biggest lottery prize ever to be received by a single person in Canada.

Childless, Stuart Kelly obviously received far more than his real or imagined requirements could possibly be. His happiness, however, was not to last long. Within three months of the receipt of this enormous sum, he was doomed to bear the unbearable. He took ill; the doctors diagnosed his illness to be the deadly, incurable disease – cancer. No amount of money could save him. No sooner had life seemed to offer him all possible comforts and luxuries after a prolonged period of 35 years of hardship and toil, than he discovered that death was lying in wait. The reality that all happiness was destined to fade away, sooner or later, dawned on him.

Man’s real problem is not wealth but limitation. Neither wealth nor resources can help him overcome his limitations. It is always in hiding, ready to mar our pleasures.

Limitations vary in the forms they take. Disease, accident, old age boredom, and death, to name but a few, come between us and our desires and prevent us from fashioning a world of our choice.

Wealth is not life but only a means to an end. Means always have secondary place. Primary importance cannot be attached to them. Man, who is often unable to differentiate between the real issues and the means tends to ignore this fact. He comes to consider wealth as summum bonum; an end in itself, treating it as if it were an alternative to life itself. That is why he sets himself to attain it, whatever the cost.

In view of such insuperable obstacles, man can never succeed in creating the world of his dreams. There are only two choices open to him. Either to treat this world as the be-all and end-all and end in total frustration; or to discover the secret of a successful life by opening his, mind to the next life and planning his present life accordingly.

“Verily Allah revealed to me,” the Prophet said, you shall be modest towards one another till nobody can boast over another, and nobody can make oppression upon another.” (Hadith)