That evening, he attended a party of very successful people. Dining table full of delicacies, expensive glasses of wine, stories revolving around stocks, real estate and vacations half a world away. A colleague just signed a billion-dollar contract but his face was still cold like a financial report. He jokingly asked: "What do you want most from upcoming?". The person pondered for a moment and then shook their heads: "I don't know. Now it's too easy to want anything, so I don't know what to expect.
That answer reminded him of the old woman selling lottery tickets in the afternoon. A person who has almost nothing, but still has something to hope for. A person who seems to have everything, but does not know what to expect. When he was a child, the expectation was very simple. Hoping for the weekend to play football with the children in the neighborhood. Hoping for Tet to come so that his mother could buy him new clothes. Hoping for summer to return to his hometown to visit his grandparents. Just hearing his mother say "May" makes the child happy. The word "May" at that time was like an unopened gift, the longer he waited, the happier it became.
Growing up, people exchange dreams for goals, exchange excitement for plans, exchange waiting for numbers. He has a very rich friend. Beautiful house, luxury car, abundant account. But every morning when he wakes up, he complains of being bored. When asked where he wants to go, what to eat, what to buy, he smiles sadly: "Nothing is missing anymore." After listening, he suddenly realized that "nothing is missing" is sometimes another way of saying emptyness.
The next day, he talked about it with an old acquaintance who often drinks tea at the beginning of the street. He looked at the bustling traffic on the street, nodding: "Money helps people live easier. But what makes people move on is hope. The poorest person is not the one with little money, but the one who has nothing to hope for.
He suddenly remembered the smile of the old lottery ticket seller in the crowded intersection. Maybe she didn't sell all the tickets that day. Maybe in the evening there were still many worries about food and clothing. But she still believed in tomorrow, just like believing that someone would stop to buy her a lottery ticket.
The most precious asset of a person is probably not the money in the account, but the feeling that every morning when we wake up, we still have something to wait for, to believe in, and to hope for.
