The Lottery of Life – Would You Re-Draw?

Lots of people I meet complain that they don’t have the luck to achieve the success and wealth that they want. “If only I was luckier, life would be a lot easier and I would be a lot happier”, they would say. Many people pray of the day they could draw that lucky ticket and win that million dollar lottery that would change their life.

What many people do not realize is that the fact that they have been lucky enough to be one of the few winners of the biggest lottery of all….the lottery of life! They were lucky enough to draw the ‘right ticket’ and be born where they are.

Imagine that 24 hours before you were born, God gave you a bowl of 100 tickets. You had to draw one ticket that would determine your sex, country of birth, wealth, intelligence etc.. What would have been your chance to end up where you are now?

Let;s look at the odds. If you were to take the entire earth’s population and shrink it to 100 people (represented by 100 tickets), with all existing human ratios the same, it would be made up of the following:

49 would be female, 51 would be male
80 would live in low-cost housing. 20 in comfortable housing.
67 would be unable to read. Only 33 would be literate
1 would have a university education. 99 would not be able to attend university
50 would be malnourished and 1 dying of starvation
33 would be without access to a safe water supply
16 would have access to the Internet
17 would live in a developed country. 83 live in underdeveloped countries

If you were given the chance to turn back time and go back to 24 hours before you were born, would you choose to return your current ticket and re-draw a new ticket from the 100 again? If not, then consider how lucky you are!