Donkey’s Carrot

I once placed a bet of N500 and got approximately N287,000 in winnings. You'd think I'd be grinning from ear to ear at my good fortune but no, I cursed my luck for not placing the bet with N1,000. Determined to defy fate, I decided to reinvest some of my winnings.

50+ slips and N140,000+ later, with nothing to show for it, I decided to quit while I was ahead and enjoy a bit of my winnings. Why didn’t I just quit from the beginning you might ask? Well, have you heard about the donkey and the carrot?

I recently saw a post where some fellow lambasted folks who choose to gamble away their measly fortunes in bet houses and all other get-rich-quick schemes and I realized this fellow is probably out of touch with three things:

i. The plight of the average Nigerian
ii. The donkey and the carrot analogy, and
iii. Hope

The donkey and carrot analogy goes like this: There's a man who owns a donkey which he uses to carry heavy loads over long distances. One day, the donkey, exhausted, refuses to go any further. All efforts to tug at it and even whip it proved abortive—the donkey just wouldn't budge.

Then, a passerby notices the donkey's reluctance and offers the owner a solution. The owner ties a stick medially across the donkey. He lets the stick extend just a bit in front of the donkey's face. And at the end of the stick, he ties a carrot and lets it dangle in front of the donkey but just out of its reach.

The donkey travelled twice what it had already done because of that. The reason is simple: It sees the treat right in front of it and believes that the further it moves, the closer it gets to the carrot. So it will keep marching.

A lot of us are like that donkey. We choose to hope against all odds. Even when it seems like hope is stupid, we still hope—because, as humans, hope is deeply rooted in us. It's hope that keeps us alive. Without it, we might as well be dead. The poor man hopes to get rich someday, the rich man hopes to get even richer and leave a lasting legacy.

The guy on the street who bets does not bet because he will win every time. He knows it's statistically impossible but he will still bet, hoping for that one lucky break. That hope is his engine; it keeps him burning, it's what gets him out of bed.

Some of us are fortunate and privileged enough to be able to make safe bets. So we bet that our '9-5s' are able to sustain us. It's just enough to keep you hooked like the carrot. However, there are certain levels of hope that they never let us get to. You try it and you discover: The house always wins.

I don't think people will ever stop betting no matter how much you ridicule and castigate then. You can vilify the person who will spend their last pence to bet that Lewandowski will score a hat trick in his next match but you need to understand that all that individual has is probably a dollar and a dream.

And hey, sometimes those long odds pay off!!!