Rewarding Cycle

Back in 1995, when my parents established a restaurant, we set up a slot machine. It lasted a year or so, and we ended up removing it because even though there was some profit, it was somehow sickening and attracting the kind of patrons we didn’t want for our place. I remember vividly how these machines worked on people to make them addicted. It was all about the fast rewarding cycle that encourages us to keep playing repeatedly.

The lottery is different because the reward cycle is longer. You buy a ticket and wait from one to just a few days. While you wait, your brain engages with the possible outcome; even if you know the possibility is minimal, there’s some pleasure in the thought until you check the results.

For a very long time, I’ve avoided all kinds of lottery and money games, but what my partner and I have been doing lately is buying tickets once per month or so, only bothering to check the results once we go again to the lottery shop. The “rewarding cycle” here is huge now, and we always have this stupid feeling that we may be millionaires so we can joke and dream about what we would do with our lives.

Those 4 or 6 euros per month is a very reasonable price to entertain our minds, and I’m okay with it.