DW's Blog

Funny How That Works Out

by DW Green — August 16, 2023

“It was the best thing that ever happened to me.”

Stories 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 night mare as a result of their obscenely good fortune.

It’s like the 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.