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The worth of a lottery is in the hope it spreads

by Judy Loest

My brother sits scratching the paint from the tic-tac-toe grids on a strip of Lucky 7s lottery tickets. He does it slowly, beginning each time in the upper left corner, then the right, then the center, savoring the anticipation, unmindful of the scratched paint falling onto his shiny, lizard-skin cowboy boots and my mother's synthetic carpet.

My brother is a man who needs hope, a man who, since returning from Vietnam in 1965 at the age of nineteen, drags behind him a bag of snakes. It has slowed his step, pulled his back into a curve, defined the quality of his life. He cannot or will not turn it loose. But he is always open to distractions, and that quality, probably more than any other, has saved him.

None of the sevens are lining up. Still, he is grinning. "I know a guy who won $5,000 two days ago," he says. "You never know."

Hope is a strange thing. Like food and water, it is one of the things that make us feel alive that directs a good part of our days. In 1951, Eric Hoffer wrote a powerful little book about hope called The True Believer that explains succinctly and in plain language more about the mind of a revolutionary or terrorist than any of the numerous books that came after 9/11. It also says more about basic human psychology than many of the texts being used in universities.

Essentially, Hoffer says that societies fail when people lose hope. I'm glad the Tennessee Lottery has arrived. It has brought a sense of fun and a source of hope in a troubled time. The smiling faces queuing up to lottery dispensers on the evening news remind me of kids at a carnival. They are invigorated with hope, hope that is not unlike the hope felt by travelers, shoppers, immigrants seeking nationalization, cancer patients entering clinical trials for some new drug, hope that offers the possibility of a better life.

Hoffer says, "There is no reason why humanity cannot be served equally by weighty and trivial motives." Man, he says, is a luxury-loving animal. If he has neither time nor opportunity for play, fancies, and luxuries, he will turn into a dull, sluggish creature, barely energetic enough to obtain a bare subsistence.

The news media always cites the potential revenue of lottery ticket sales. They are quick to point out that all profits go to education. Rarely does one see mention of the psychological boost communities get and the incalculable ricochet effects of such uplifted spirits.

I have good friends who own a fine art and gift gallery. They say one of the great blessings of the business is that their patrons are always in a good mood. Most days they derive a kind of high from all the good cheer bouncing around. I imagine that lottery ticket sellers will experience a similar phenomenon. It's the same addiction that drives movie theaters, beauty salons, singles bars, car dealerships, and, yes, despite the heat I will take for including them, churches. It's an addiction to hope.

And hope is a communicable condition. Harvard professor, physician and author of The Anatomy of Hope, Jerome Groopman was interviewed recently on NPR's "All Things Considered." He said "that hope, unlike optimism, is clear-eyed.

Hope sees everything in front of it, and, through all the troubles, all the problems, it sees a true path to a better future; and that vision in the mind's eye has profound effects on the chemistry, on the brain and the workings of the body."

Groopman talked of a patient with an eminently curable lymphoma but who believed he was going to die. The patient had witnessed a friend's death from cancer, and, thus, his point of reference was one of failure and despair. At his first chemotherapy treatment, an insightful nurse seated him next to a man who was being treated for the same condition and who was on his way to being cured. That encounter, says Groopman, gave his patient a new point of reference, one in the present that allowed him to see the future.

For this brief moment, scratching the paint from a strip of Lucky 7s, his thoughts riffing through images of what he would do if he were to win big, my brother has forgotten his countless physical and mental ills, is breathing easier, feels light enough to smile, to reclaim some of that self he lost that year on Highway One.

My mother and I are caught up in his cheer. I'm thinking of the countless people like my brother whose point of reference is one of despair and who might benefit from a spark of hope. I'm thinking the lottery has to be a good thing.

Judy Loest is a Virginia native, a free-lance writer, poet, and free-thinker, who lives in downtown Knoxville.