26 Oct 2020

Listening to the radio, I heard the DJ spruiking their latest competition, in which one lucky listener would be winning a “life altering” amount of money.

It got me pondering about how much would be needed to alter your life. And how much might be needed by other people to alter their lives.

It kind of overlaps a little about a previous bit of diarrhoea about lottery wins, I know. But the question this time is what would significantly alter your life? Then, of course, how much money would it take?

Our thoughts always usually go straight to winning enough money so you don’t ever have to work again. Sure, that would change your life, no doubt about that.

But how about if you are facing a nasty illness, where the treatment costs a significant amount of money? If someone were to hand you the money needed for your treatment, your life would be altered – not only in the accessibility to the treatment, but the relief from the ongoing debt that would have been faced in trying to get hold of the treatment otherwise?

What about if you were homeless? A life altering amount of money could be enough to get you into a rental property, off the streets with a semblance of security for once. The ability to have a steady base from which to move ahead with your life and dreams.

If you can’t afford the education to get the sort of job you want, someone handing you the money needed to be able to afford this would definitely change your life.

Let’s move out of our own countries mentally, for a little while. In underdeveloped countries, how much money do you think it would take to alter someone’s life? We know how very little money it takes to provide a water pump, or a toilet, or a goat even, for those in desperately poor conditions. They would probably suggest that the amount of money I’d spend on takeaway coffee in a week, could change their lives. And maybe that of their entire village.

How many lives could be altered in the world, with the amount of money you could win from a radio station that we in the western world figure is sufficient to “alter our lives”?????