On my way down to that London for a meeting and was listening to the world service on the drive to the station. News article came up about the Italian national lottery, which has a jackpot that currently stands somewhere around the 100 million Euro mark.
What jumped out at me though, in amongst the spectrum of moral outrage at the huge amounts on offer, to the absolute frenzy of ticket buying (Italy has a population of around 58 million people, and they seem to have bought a total of 100 million tickets) was a comment from one hopeful ticket holder. When asked what she thought were her chances of winning, in the face of odds at 600 million to one (you have to pick 6 numbers from a total of 90) she said simply "It's not about the winning - for cost of one Euro I can dream. If I didn't buy a ticket, then I cannot dream".
I found that quite beautiful....
