I’m walking around, like I often do, when I spot it. A lottery ticket on the ground. I don’t play the lottery, but I pick it up anyway. Free is free, after all.

“Funny,” I think to myself.

On the ticket are all of my favorite numbers. It’s as if someone made a lottery ticket using my bank’s PIN, my jersey number from baseball in high school, and the number of movies I wish Keanu Reeves had made (i.e. zero).

With my cell phone, I check to see if, by chance, the ticket had won any money. To my disbelief, it had. In fact, it had won a lot. A whole, whole lot. In my hand was a ticket worth millions.

I was rich. In that winning ticket I saw a big house with a giant swimming pool. I saw fast cars. I saw vacations all over the world. I saw an assistant who would do nothing all day except walk around with shoes on his hands killing bugs that had the misfortune of entering my domain.

But before I knew it, a gust of wind had snatched the ticket from my hand.

I run after it, but it gets farther and farther away. Out of breath, I bend over and put my hands on my hips as I watch the ticket slip off into the distance.

If my hands had been stronger, the wind would have never been able to pry it from my fingers. If I had worn running shoes that day, I would have caught it. If I had been in better shape and a little faster, I would have been able to chase it down.

If…if…if…

I should be asleep right now. It’s 5:30 on a Monday morning and I have a job which doesn’t require me to be awake and lucid for several more hours.

But I can’t sleep. The lost lottery ticket is weighing too heavily on my mind.

Hopefully, it’s obvious to everyone the ticket is a metaphor. I didn’t REALLY have a winning lottery ticket in my hands and lose it. Of course, the week is young. Who knows what God has in store for me this afternoon.

But no, I didn’t really lose a winning ticket.

It just feels like it.

Have you ever sat across the table from someone and realized, with total clarity, that certain someone possessed everything you always knew you wanted and, to paraphrase Matthew Perry’s line in the movie Fools Rush In, everything you never knew you always wanted? I’m talking about the kind of someone who is truly one of a kind. The kind of someone who doesn’t grow on trees.

My weekend started with me sitting across a table from such a someone.

My weekend ended with me losing such a someone. The wind wasn’t responsible for snatching her away, but she got away just the same.

The sad part of the story, for those of you who are wondering “Isn’t this supposed be a humor blog?!”, is that I have no one to blame except myself for my current plight.

I have baggage — much of it literal — from my last relationship. Even though it ended more than two years ago, there are still remains. And the fact of the matter is I have not worked as diligently as I should have to fully get over the few remaining issues. I have been complacent for too long.

Because this certain someone is observant, she spotted it. Because she is honest, she told me what most never would. And because she is someone who deserves the very best, she is unwilling to settle. In short, she told me I needed to get over it, get my house in order and fulfill my potential.

It was the kind of brutal honesty you normally only hear on the TV show House, but (thankfully) it was spoken with thought and kindness. These are issues I need to address not just so I can someday try again to win this individual (or someone like her), but issues I need to address for my own well being.

I get all that. I do. I realize today and the two days preceding today will be looked back on as turning points in my life. I have no doubt, truly, I will look back on these days fondly.

But right now, today, their memory makes me ache.

These feelings will, hopefully very soon, end. To coin a phrase I am almost certain has never before been uttered in history, my heart will go on. I’m tough and resilient. But more than that, I’m a guy who craves challenges. And this is most definitely a challenge. Best of all, it’s a challenge that will have, regardless of where life takes me, lots of rewards once I meet it.

So, I will put on my running shoes. I will become faster. I will make my hands stronger. And if another lottery ticket comes along in six months, I’ll be ready to catch it and hold onto it this time.

And if I’m blessed, maybe it will be the same ticket as before.