1. 5
    Mar

    Too good to be true

    Last night, after a long, grueling day, I couldn’t force my mind to shut off to sleep, so I decided to roll over, pick up my handy dandy Kindle and read a few chapters of a book I started at the beginning of the week. According to Kindle, I’m 41% finished with Off The Record by Elizabeth White. Amazon readers have given Off The Record an average of four out of five stars so far, and I can already see why. (See for yourself here)

    Although I am very in tune to the plot line (which features a young Alabama judge with strict moral and political values running for a seat on the Alabama Supreme Court, who re-connects with a former college flame turned New York religion reporter), one cliche line from an obscure, almost un-related (at this point in time) scene in the book caught my attention last night and caused me to put down my Kindle, grab a pen and decorative sticky note, copy the line onto said sticky note, proceed to make notes about how to blog about the line and fall into a deep sleep. (Success! Sleep!)

    The line, “If something seems too good to be true, it probably is.”

    Two words that stuck out to me in this line were ‘seems’ and ‘probably’. The uncertain nature of both words does not ring true to the overall message it’s meant to convey. The advice here is that something which is real and good in life will never be perfect, if it is, then it is not real. However, by using the words ‘seems’ and ‘probably’, the line makes the reader question whether or not they are the exception rather than the rule. Maybe something does ‘seem’ too good to be true, but what if that’s just one person’s perception…does that then make it unreal in all cases, or just in that case?

    For those of you who prefer to learn by example, here’s one. The current estimated jackpot for March 6 for the Texas Lotto is $55 million. The estimated cash value of this prize is $35 million. So after the necessary taxes and fees have been taken out of the money, the winner will end up with $35 million dollars if they chose at the time of purchase of their ticket that they do not wish to receive annual payments (that’s an entirely different ballgame, folks!). Now, with all of that said, the chances of winning the jackpot prize is actually 1:25,827,165. To you does that make the odds of ending up with $35 million bucks in the bank seem too good to be true?

    If your answer is yes, then you probably think that winning the Texas Lottery is too good to be true. But what about past winners? The people in the Texas Lottery winners gallery would probably tell you differently. Although many of them have not won jackpot prizes, the prizes they have won have probably convinced them that winning big is NOT too good to be true.

    As much as I hold to the fact that there has to be something out there that too good to be true for me that really isn’t, in my own life, I cannot think of one thing that I thought was too good to be true which didn’t eventually let me down. I believe that’s just the nature of our society, though. Society forces people to change their perception of things that they want to perceive to be perfect, therefore setting every situation up to end in heartbreak. That really reinforces my point of yesterday’s blog…don’t listen to what other people say or think, it really can only lead to bad things.

    It’s all a matter of perception. Choose yours.

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