You’ve already won the greatest lottery there is.
“We are going to die, and that makes us the lucky ones.
Most people are never going to die because they are never going to be born.”
—Richard Dawkins
Congratulations. If you’re reading this, you’ve already won.
Not the lottery that fills your bank account or the raffle that hands you a free vacation—but something infinitely rarer: the lottery of existence itself. Out of stardust, out of rocks, out of all the never-born possibilities of the universe—you get to be alive.
Not only alive, but alive as a human being. That means you don’t just experience; you appreciate. You can step outside your own sensations, notice them, name them, savor them. Your life is not merely survival—it’s a chance to stand in awe at the majesty of existence.
The Miracle We Miss
So why don’t we feel like we’ve won?
Because familiarity sedates us. When you’ve always been alive, it’s easy to take life for granted. The gift feels normal. The miracle becomes wallpaper. Richard Dawkins called this the anesthetic of soporific familiarity—a numbness that sneaks in because the extraordinary is happening constantly, and our minds stop registering it.
If we could see the world for a single day—as if it were given to us just once—we’d be overcome with awe. Every blade of grass, every stranger’s smile, every breath would feel like a revelation. But since life is delivered to us every day, we stop noticing.
Life becomes less of a miracle and more of a checklist.
Shaking Off the Anesthetic
The challenge is not to live in constant ecstasy—that’s impossible. The challenge is to remember. To shake off the anesthetic of familiarity long enough to see our existence clearly, if only in flashes.
Life Savor—the philosophy I’ve been trying to live and share—is about cultivating that remembrance. It’s about waking up before actual death wakes us up. It’s about living now with the same reverence you’d feel in your final hour, when every inhale would feel like treasure and every second like grace.
A Thought Experiment
Try this: imagine the hour before your death. You know time is short. You know this world—its light, its taste, its warmth—is about to vanish. How would you look at the people you love? How would you savor a sip of water? How would you breathe in that final hour?
Now, realize: you already are in those final hours. They’re just not all here at once. Someday, one of your hours will be the last. Today isn’t it—but it’s on the same timeline.
Why wait until the end to notice the value of the middle?
A Practice of Gratitude
The fact of your existence is always available to you as a place of grounding. You can return to it any time you feel stuck, overwhelmed, or numb.
Here are a few ways:
- Count today as gain. Horace once said, “Every day that fortune grants you, count as gain.” What if you took him literally?
- Do a one-day lens. Pretend today is the only day you’ll ever have. What would change?
- Name one gift. Before sleep tonight, list one thing that was better than not existing. A laugh. A smell. A single moment of quiet.
These aren’t tricks to deny hardship. They’re tools to rebalance perspective. Because the baseline fact remains: you are here, alive, able to notice.
Closing Thought
Rebecca Goldstein wrote that “one wants to live in a way that at least begins to do justice to existence.”
That’s the invitation. To treat life not as an entitlement but as a bonus. To live like someone who realizes they’ve already won.
So—congratulations. You’re alive. The question is: what will you do with your winnings?
For more like this, visit the broader project at life-savor.com, or explore the Life Savor book itself.
To learn more about Life Savor’s philosophy,
read Life Savor: Treasuring Our Gift of Life by Erik Victor Reed.
