What Would You Do If You Had a Million Dollars?

When I was a kid, my friends and I sometimes would amuse ourselves with the game of Three Wishes. Someone would ask, "What would you do if you had three wishes?" And of course the first time you played it everyone else made sure you felt foolish for not making one of them "three more wishes," and after that it really was a game of Two-Wishes-plus-the-extra-wish-wish, which wasn't nearly as interesting, but seemed mandatory somehow.

One of the three two wishes was usually a large sum of money, such as "a million billion trillion dollars!" or "a googol dollars!" the idea being that, if the other granted wish turned out to be disappointing, you could simply purchase whatever you wanted with the money wish.

Oddly enough, I don't remember anything I wished for with my "real" wishes, i.e. the non-extra-wish and non-monetary-wish, of any time I played the game. Probably a horse (or a whole stable full of them, considering the general direction the game tended), because I know I really wanted a horse when I was a kid (but I never got one).

Lately I've been finding myself playing this game again, or a variation of it: what would you do if you had a million dollars? (In my case, I usually settle for $100,000, because there's a ton of stuff I could do with that kind of money.)

The point is, there is no magical genie in a lamp who will grant you your heart's desire. There is no pile of gold lying at the end of a rainbow which conveniently parked its end in your back yard. Sometimes, even though you work hard every day, you can't see your situation improving, or even the possibility of it improving anytime soon on its current trajectory.

And when you live with that feeling day after day, sometimes you lapse into daydreaming, because the possibility of making your dreams come true seems so far out of reach, that all you have is the dreams themselves to cheer you along your way.

Don't get me wrong--I believe in fighting for your dreams and trying to make them into reality. I think a lot of people are content to dream all their lives and never break out of their comfort zone to make things happen. I'm not one of those people. I do fight. I study hard. I work hard. I push through disappointments and failures and try again.

But this life can be so wearying. Sometimes you have to stop and take a break and just mentally throw off the restraints of your current reality and dream big!

What would you do if you could do anything? If money, distance, time, space, opportunity weren't a problem? What would you do if you had a million dollars?

Since I've already thought about it, I'll go first. :)

Wish One

I would buy a house. A little cottage where I could live and work. It wouldn't have to be new--a fixer-upper would do. It would have plenty of light inside. A small kitchen and bathroom. Maybe a loft for my bedroom, and the main area would be my studio. Maybe it would have a red door and roses or wisteria growing around the windows. Maybe I would have a dog and a cat and an apple tree in the yard.

Wish Two

I would shoot a movie in Prague. I wrote a script for a movie a couple of years ago, a story set in the year 1900 in Prague. Since then I've been thinking about how to get it made. I considered shooting here in Germany, but an actor friend who had lived in Prague encouraged me to do it right--put some money into it, shoot on location, and get the best result possible. As soon as he said it I knew he was right, and that's what I'm planning to do, as soon as I can put some money down myself.

Wish Three

Asha: Made by empowered women in India

I would give something back. I would invest in people. I would give them a hand up so they can get to the place where they can stand strong and help others in turn. When you're a kid in Sunday school, they tell you that "it is more blessed to give than to receive" means that even though you'd rather be receiving, you should be giving, because it's better. When you get older, you realize that it actually does feel better to give than to receive. But it goes far beyond that. When you don't have enough, you often find yourself at the receiving end, and that's when you truly realize that it's such a privilege to be able to give rather than receive.

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So, now it's your turn. :) What would you do if you had a million dollars? Go!