Silvern Speeches...: Gambling and Life

“You’ve got to know when to hold ‘em, know when to fold ‘em, know when to walk away, know when to run…” ~ Kenny Rogers, ‘The Gambler’.

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Sometimes Life feels like a bad game of cards and you wish you could just throw all your cards on the table and surrender, giving up the game. But sometimes you can’t, and this worsens your feeling of being trapped at Life’s table, playing cards and making polite conversation (even if just using nods and grunts) when you’d rather be anywhere else in the world. Well, not ANYwhere, but you get the picture.

‘The Gambler’ became one of my favorite songs on first listen because of how apt a metaphor gambling is for Life. We are all sitting at the table trying to make the best of whatever cards get handed us. Depending on which card game your table is playing, a favorable hand may be aces, or twos and threes. Depending on the rules of the game, you may have very little control over the game once your cards are handed to you, and that is one of the scariest and most frustrating things to us as human beings – the absence/loss of control. It is no coincidence that one of the most common nightmares in Life is falling – there’s absolutely nothing you can do till you land.

When Life hands you a miserable hand, you have little to no control over the game. Your best bet is to put on a poker face, and hope that those dealt better hands stumble and create an opportunity you can grab and run with. Of course, there are those games where you can exchange or add to your cards, and those possibilities can give a bit of a boost in overcoming being dealt a bad hand to win or at least break even in the game.

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But most of the time, it’s a matter of waiting for the right opportunity to put the cards you’ve been dealt on the table, instantly winning or taking control of the game. And in the meanwhile, you keep a vigilant eye out on the table and another on the selection of cards in your hand, permuting all possibilities and opportunities, and recalibrating your strategy every time a play is made.

And since we cannot stop playing for as long as we live, and since the ending of each game whether we win or lose leads to another game (with the occasional change of table or particular game of cards); we wait, pounce, rinse and repeat, hoping to at least break even at the end.