Being very rational and analytical has its downsides. People like me---and I mean people who often use perspective to try to understand the way other people can feel, and use projection to try to understand the motivation behind the actions of others, and who also try to turn to science and reason when determining how they feel about things---miss out on certain small joys other, less aware, people might get to enjoy.

For instance, the lottery. I can play a scratcher now and then because it's kind of like a video game (though one in which you're going to lose most of the time), but I'll never buy one every day just hoping I'll get lucky and when big.

Lottery tickets, I take no part in. I'm just too aware of the astronomical odds involved in winning. Sure, it'd be nice to believe that if I spend a dollar every day on a lottery ticket, I might eventually be a lucky winner. But that's a costly bet, and at the end of it there would be a lot of regret. I'd keep track of all those dollars and then beat myself up at the end of my life when it finally occurred to me, on my death bed, that I spent a kajillion dollars for nothing. "I could have bought a nicer car stereo when I was 30, if only..."

So I don't get to enjoy being blissfully ignorant of the fact that I will never Get Rich Quick. I also don't believe I'll ever be a rockstar or an astronaut or a fireman or The Situation, so I differ from the majority of people (in the US) right there I guess.

One of the warehouse guys told me about this thing "his people" do (Mexicans, and hey, he said "his people" and he's actually a legal immigrant from Mexico so he'd know). They get ten people together and each person pitches in $100. They cut up 10 pieces of paper with a number 1 thru 10 on it, mix them up, and everyone picks one. They then take this $1000 and give it to whoever got the first number. For the next 9 months, every one of them pitches in $100 and then the next person gets $1000. This is supposed to be some way to get a cash bonus for everyone.

He asked me if I wanted to be in on this and I immediately thought: man, seriously, if I got anywhere past #3 I'd be pissed off. If I got #10 then I'd just bow out and put $100 under my mattress every month and then pull it out after ten months and have $1000 and I wouldn't be forced to give my money to other people. And what if someone pussies out or loses their job after they get their little $1000 bonus? Do we all just take the hit and only get $900 after that? Jesus, I'd rather just give myself $100 every month, and fuck everyone else. Besides, don't these people know that they could actually be earning interest, even if just a tiny little bit, if they got a savings account?

So that's no fun for me either.

But it's not just retarded shit like that, where you feel like you're gaming the system or you're more special or luckier than other people, it can also be good feelings that we miss out on.

Like believing that our pets love us.

I want to believe, I so want to believe, that this dog that I've known for the last 15 years of my life or so actually feels love (or comradery) for me. She looks at me with her big sad eyes and I feel a companionship there: we two are the results of the same fucked up parents, and our eyes are perma-sad exactly the same way.

But maybe that's just how her face looks.

So much of a dog's enthusiasm is expended in the desire and hunt for food. "Food? Food? Food?" is what your dog is saying to you when it leaps all over you when you come home. "Is it food time now? IS IT!?" It's not going, "Oh god, I missed you!" Unless it's saying, "Oh god, I missed you, oh bearer of food and other food like substances which are yummy! Are you back because it is FOOD TIME?"

Of course, it's just that we like to think our animals are like us. When a dog protects us or our child, we don't like to think that it only protected us because we give it food more often than someone else does, or because our child is simply seen as part of the food providing pack the animal is indentured to.

Sometimes I look at my dog and I feel so confused. She can't actually understand anything about me. She's watched me age from 10 to 25, but does she recognize me as the same person? (Factually, it is likely she does simply by my scent, since dog's noses are so acute.) Even if she does, does she care? If I vanished one day, would she notice I was gone? I was gone for a couple years once... I wonder if she remembers.

On the other hand there's no way to know for sure that my dog doesn't love me separate from the love of food. I don't speak dog just the same as she doesn't speak human. If dogs communicate telepathically to each other via some unknown medium we've never discovered, perhaps they talk about us all the time. I swear there was a point in my teens where the dogs would start excitedly parking a solid three minute before my parents would come home---at which point they would still be driving up the street about half a mile away. What does that mean? Are their senses of smell just that good or are dogs psychic... and if they are...

How scary! I wonder what else they know...

What makes other people who don't seem to think of these things---or at least if they do, they disregard them whole-heartedly---different? Why can't I turn off the analytical part of my brain and just play the lottery and gleam enjoyment from it? Why can't I see the worth in getting $1000 now only to pay up $1000 later? Why can other people say things like, "I KNOW my dog loves me! I KNOWS it!" with so much conviction?

Why not me?

WHHHHYYYYYYY?