In my business, we replace roofs. A week or so ago, we stripped old terracotta roof tiles off a roof in preparation for the installation of a new colorbond metal roof. My guys make a bit of an early morning racket by proceeding to strip the old roof tiles off and chucking them a fair way down into the back of a tip truck. There were a lot of smashed roof tiles ending up in the back of the tipper.

It is usually my job to take the tipper to the recycling plant where I would tip the contents next to the crusher. It was another uneventful trip to the tip for me until I had made my exit from the yard and travelled maybe a kilometre. I heard a clunk in the tipper tray behind me and pulled over to check what it was.

It was an amazing sight. There was a solitary roof tile (very intact and looking hardly scratched) lying in the otherwise empty tray. Somehow it had survived the throw from the roof, managed to hang on to the side of the slippery tray that had been tipped vertical during the dumping action – then fallen from the side to the bottom of the tray during the bouncing trip away from the tip site. And it had stayed unscathed. I marvelled at the odds of such a thing happening.

I was sitting outside a newsagent having some lunch a few days ago and I could not help looking at the Ozlotto ads. The next draw is at the end of July for $15M dollars. Assuming that the lottery business is profitable –  this means that it would take almost the whole population of Australia investing a dollar in this lottery to make the payout possible. And this is only one lottery. If you add up all the poker machines, racing and betting going on, the sums are quite extraordinary.

Yesterday morning, I saw Mike Rogers playing the odds with the early break away in Le Tour. Unlike Jack Bauer who fell to the long odds days earlier, Mike won the game on stage 16.

Astrologers and scientists continue to fail in finding another human race in the vast universe, because somehow, it just happens that there is only one place in space that holds the right conditions for human survival. Humans defy the odds to breathe an existence.

And that is perhaps why we are suckers in playing games where the odds are against us.

But a man in the hot dry desert longs for a puddle to play in and the shipwreck in the open ocean constantly searches for land. Even in the betting game we are looking for ‘sure bets’. Dating couples want to be sure of each other before they commit.

We are born to be punters but taught to embrace security. We tip our toes in the water by buying that weekly $2 lottery, but shy away from taking the bigger risks which have the slim possibility of tremendous rewards.

Mick Rogers said after stage 16 that he won because he was no longer afraid to lose.

We are born to ‘have a go’ – but why do most of us spend our lives in safe houses?