A relative was with me this week when I went to Personal Lottery Central and was she displeased!
“Going there is putting yourself at risk.”
“I’ll wait in the car until no one else is there.”
“Going there is putting me at risk.”
“Playing the guilt card is not fair.”
“Buying a lottery ticket can hardly be called essential.”
“It’s essential to my blog.”
“You are being ridiculous.”
And at that I quit arguing. I had no answer. It does seem ridiculous and somehow unpatriotic in these Covid-19 obsessed days to leave my house and go into public just to buy a lottery ticket.
In our free, individual-happiness-pursuing society, there is always that tension between sublimating individual choices to the benefit of the whole. When does “We need” become the imperative to the “I want”? How do we guard against the “You should” becoming the tyranny of “You will”?
Who ever thought we would see the days where staying home and doing nothing was the best way to help society and serve our country?
As to that, we may be staying home, but we are not doing nothing. Someone who loves me gave me a handmade mask. A kajillion handmade masks are being created for family, friends, strangers. Howe awesome.
We have all heard stories and stories and more stories of the creative ways we Americans are assisting in the We Are All In This Together movement. I’m not going to list them here.
I’m just going to say that my $3.00 lottery ticket is assisting our schools. Whether it should or not is not the question right now. It is. And that’s enough for me to call it my personal Essential Work.
Be safe. Stay well.