If it is the truth!! It must be spoken! 
Winning the lottery can be bad luck
George Berkin/NJ Voices By George Berkin/NJ Voices
on March 28, 2013 at 11:00 PM
A longtime owner of a Passaic grocery store had a very unlucky day over last weekend: he won the lottery in a big way.
According to conventional wisdom, of course, winning the lottery hardly seems like a misfortune -- just the opposite.
After all, who could doubt the sheer luck and good fortune of having purchased the winning ticket in last weekend's $338.3 million multi-state Powerball drawing? The chances of this guy winning the jackpot were 1 in 175 million.
"I'm very happy," Pedro Quezada of Passaic told assembled reporters after his win was announced, according to Tuesday's Star-Ledger. His winnings work out to be $221 million if taken as a lump sum, or $152 million after taxes.
Unfortunately, things are not always as they seem at first glance, nor as they are often portrayed in initial news accounts. If past lottery winners are any indication, the first flush of happiness may soon turn sour. I believe there is a lesson in this.
Examples of lottery winners whose lives turned into nightmares after they hit the jackpot are legion. After winning $314 million on a one-dollar bet, a West Virginia man became the target of numerous thieves. He settled a lawsuit with a woman who accused him of sexual assault. Two casinos banned him for writing bad checks. A family member died of drug overdoses.
After winning more than $16 million, a Pennsylvania man received death threats from a killer hired by a family member seeking to acquire some of his winnings. A former girlfriend sued him in an attempt to collect some of his winnings. He experienced six broken marriages, and was living on welfare when he died.
Or these tragic stories, readily available through a quick Internet search: A Florida winner was murdered for his money. A Texas man ended his own life after going on a spending spree and engaging in a sexual relationship that resulted in bankruptcy and divorce. A New Jersey woman won back-to-back jackpots, garnering more than $5 million in winnings, only to end up in a mobile home.
The many sad stories are not that difficult to find. So why are accounts of people winning the lottery routinely cast as Cinderella stories in which the fairy godmother of easy money waves her magic wand, conjuring up a happy ending?
For starters, we love illusions. (Why else would Lady Gaga be so popular?) Like the lottery itself, the stories of lottery winners take a somewhat dreary reality and turn it into a "dream" come true.
Until he won the lottery, the future multi-millionaire's daily routine in Passaic was fairly simple, and perhaps dull. Every day, Pedro Quezada would walk to a nearby liquor store, where he would purchase two cold beers and a lottery ticket. Then, suddenly: a huge fortune. "I still can't believe it," his wife told reporters.
Money, in itself, is not a bad thing. We need money to survive; earning money is a necessary pursuit. Nor is having a large amount of money necessarily a bad thing, despite what some people might say about the "one-percenters."
(Ironically, many of the same people who decry the "one-percenters" have no complaints about this lottery winner, who has suddenly joined that exalted rank. And if financial wizards seem to have done little to acquire their wealth, our lottery winner surely has done even less.)
So why is winning the lottery, by all initial appearances a stroke of good luck, such a bad thing?
First, life is – or is supposed to be – a balance of material and spiritual interests. We need money to survive, but life is about more than just money. There are also spiritual concerns to pursue: family and friends, but also the unseen realm of the spirit. For believers in a biblical faith, spiritual concerns involve the pursuit of the God of the Bible.
Unfortunately, winning a huge amount of money with no effort on our part throws that delicate balance between the material and the spiritual off kilter. Suddenly having so much cash sends a strong (but misleading) message that the material is all that matters. It would take a sense of perspective beyond what most of us could muster to keep that balance.
If sensible priorities are not in place before the win, the likelihood of living a successful, balanced, life afterward go way down. The disasters that follow are well documented.
Meanwhile, consider the actions of this most recent lottery winner. Within days of hitting the jackpot, the Passaic man decided that his work as owner of a grocery store was suddenly a thing of the past. "I can't work anymore in that store," he told reporters.
So now, the valuable lesson that he had daily taught to his five children – that going to work is an honorable calling for the head of a household – has been lost. His children, who once learned a valuable lesson about responsibility through the example of their father, will now learn that it's all about being a lucky lottery winner.
And how will his sudden wealth affect his other relationships? It would be nice to say that it probably won't. But as the many examples recounted in the tragic histories above illustrate, relationships likely won't be the same. Given the power of sudden, unearned, enormous wealth, how could they be? Sudden "friends" will come calling.
I hope that I am wrong, and that the lottery winner from Passaic continues to lead a balanced life surrounded by family and friends unaffected by his sudden wealth. He should be so lucky.
