S

November 25th

FUNNY HOW THAT WORKS OUT

“As for me, I would choose being sick over living in luxury, for

being sick only harms the body, whereas luxury destroys both the

body and the soul, causing weakness and incapacity in the body,

and lack of control and cowardice in the soul. What’s more, luxury

breeds injustice because it also breeds greediness.”

—MUSONIUS RUFUS, LECTURES, 20.95.14–17

tories about lottery winners tend to share one lesson: suddenly coming
into a great deal of money is a curse, not a blessing. Just a few years
after they get their big check, many lottery winners are actually in worse
financial shape. They’ve lost friends, they’ve gotten divorced. Their whole
lives have been turned into a nightmare as a result of their obscenely good
fortune.
It’s like that Metallica lyric (fittingly from a song called “No Leaf
Clover”): “Then it comes to be that the soothing light at the end of your
tunnel / Is just a freight train coming your way.”
And yet the most common response from a cancer survivor, the person
who went through the thing we all dread and fear? “It was the best thing
that ever happened to me.”
Funny how that works out, isn’t it?