M&Ms, Lotto, and Pot

A while back - a long while back, if you want me to be honest - I knew a guy who was living beneath his station. We were both waiters, so the bar wasn't set very high to begin with, but Jimmy had ducked under. While I was still living with Mom and Dad, Jimmy was living with Dave and Heidi. Dave and Heidi like their pot, and Jimmy REALLY liked his pot. A lot. An awful lot, if you know what I mean. I envied Jimmy the simplicity of his existence. Get up, go to work, finish work, come home, spark a J, and fade off into oblivion. Next day, repeat as before. No real decisions to make, no real responsibility aside from his account with his dope man.
   Jimmy lived on three things: M&Ms, his daily ration of pot, and the absolute certainty that the next time around he was going to win the Lotto. I'm not saying that he was really, really hopeful that he would win, he KNEW the next jackpot was his. Every time. It was an amazing display of both hope and delusion, with perhaps a bit of desperation mixed in.
   He never won. Not once. From time to time he'd hit a few numbers and get a buck or two back, maybe win five or ten bucks once in a great while. But that didn't stop him from going back over and over and over again, each time secure in the belief that his luck would turn and he would end up the next easy millionaire.
   And I wondered about this. Was he being foolish or was he being hopeful? Was there a difference between the two?
   His situation was desperate, he rented a small room in a tiny house in a pretty crappy neighborhood. He worked as a waiter and had no formal education beyond a high school diploma. He had no girlfriend, and his prospects for improving his lot in life were dim. He was obviously hoping to shortcut the entire process with a big-ticket Lotto win, but he also just as obviously needed something to look forward to, some aspiration to hold onto to distract him from the harsh reality of the shambles his life had become.
   He wasn't so different than everyone else. Each of us may have a much better situation, more money, more friends, love, a good job. But there is always something missing, something more we feel we could be doing, something better just out of reach. There's always a lotto ticket we think we could buy to instantly erase everything we don't like and make it all just the way we wish it were. But we know in our hearts that nobody really wins the Lotto, not people like you and me.
   But people do win. Every day. So I'm thinking I need to be a little more like Jimmy, a little more hopeful, a little more optimistic. A little less stoned, obviously, and a little more driven to make the change I want, rather than just wait for it to happen by itself.
   Now, where's my bag of M&Ms?