The great game

It seems strange that life can be nothing more than a series of events written as definitive wrinkles on the surface of your brain. And at the same time unfold into the miasma of a treacherous and impenetrable fog. How we see the everyday. The waking, breathing, seeing, thinking, day to day existence of all humanity, can be at one time so simple and laid out before us, and then again so complex as to be unfathomable to even the greatest minds.

I see my life so far as a passage through a many gated labyrinth, wherein lies the lessons one must learn in order to survive in todays society. Never give away too much to too many. Never hold everything to yourself. Never let fear bar your path to happiness, but never let bravado carry you away to an uncertain fate. All these things are simple on the surface. And yet so infinitely complex when you attempt to implement them into decisions.

The other difficulty lies in that you never know when a decision or lack of one is going to actually make or break you. It's like playing poker when you don't know how many chips you have let alone how many you're betting on each hand. You can have the best hand in play and hold out till the end, and circumstances can make you fold. Or you can have the worst hand, and something chooses to have you bet it all. Call it fate, serendipity, god, nature, what have you. You are NEVER in complete control. You can only choose when to take more cards or not, when to fold early, and when to move on to a different table. You can bluff, but that's a great way to flip on the great switch called Kharma. To bluff in this game means to not be true to yourself, and to take everyone elses playing for granted. There is no winning in bluffing, because something won through a ploy will always turn around and get you kicked from the next hand, which may well be THE hand. You can stop playing. But to stop playing means to hand in all your chips and never play again. Because contrary to some belief systems, this is the only game you'll ever know.

The largest lesson in life that I've become aware of is that no matter what happens, no matter what actions you take or how you react to any situation, it all lies on your shoulders. You can cop out and say that others are cheating, you can call a crooked dealer, but ultimately what you end up with is your lot and that's all there is to it. No amount of lament or complaint is going to change the cards you're holding. The only thing to do is stick around to see the next hand. And yes it very well may be just as bad as all the others, but if you don't see it, you'd never know. And that's always the worst. To know that SOMETHING may have come from playing and that NOTHING can ever come from NOT playing.

So I guess the point of all this is that I'm not ready to cash in yet. I'm not ready to let the cards lie and not buy into see them. I'm going to keep playing until it's someone ELSE'S turn to call a crooked dealer. Because there is never NOT a loser. No matter what game you play, in order to win you have to beat someone or something else. So I guess the real question is, who am I playing against right now, and what do I have to lose.