Article 3, 2006

INSPIRITRIX.COM

Article 3, 2006

DEAL OR NO DEAL

“Life is like a game of cards. The hand that is dealt you is determinism; the way you play it is free will.”
—Jawaharlal Nehru

My friend and I have been watching this new game show where the objective is first to pick out the one case out of 26 that, hopefully, has one million dollars in it, and then to eliminate all the other cases that contain amounts ranging from a mere one cent to $750,000 by trying to find the smallest amounts of money first. Each successive round elicits from “the banker,” a mystery man who sits in a shadowy booth above the audience, offers to buy the still-unopened, originally-chosen case back from the contestant, presumably to save the bank from losing the one million dollars the contestant may or may not have in it.

Of course, the offers from the banker go up or down depending on whether cases with small or large amounts of money, especially the case with the coveted one million dollars, have been opened. At first, contestants usually do quite well in avoiding the larger amounts, since they have so many cases to choose from. As you might imagine, some of the offers from the banker get to be quite large and enticing, but, invariably, the contestants pass them up in the hopes of scoring even bigger amounts. You can just see the train wreck coming. It is obvious that their instincts are telling them to deal, but the voice of the never-satisfied ego, which confuses dealing with settling, is louder and tells them that they can beat the odds.

Sure, the odds look good, and things may go well for a while, but everyone forgets what they are really dealing with—uncontrollable circumstances that change in an instant, and change they do. Most times, the results aren’t pretty. I am not saying that the contestants should never go for broke, take a leap of faith, or risk it all, but unless, like the young Starfleet Academy cadet James T. Kirk did in the no-win Kobayashi Maru simulation, they have reprogrammed the game to accommodate them because they “don’t like to lose,” they would be better served to shut out the urgings of their ego and listen to their gut.

It’s just like the rest of life, whether we are run by our soul or our ego, we make our best guess with the information we have at the time, and we either reap the reward or pay the price for our choices. Dealing is not settling. A great life is yours to be had. My question to you is, “Deal, or no deal?”

“You’ve got to know when to hold ‘em, know when to fold ‘em, know when to walk away, and know when to run. You never count your money when you’re sittin’ at the table. There’ll be time enough for countin’ when the dealin’s done.”
—Kenny Rogers, The Gambler

© Copyright 2006 by Robin Wilder. All rights reserved. Please honor this copyright. While this publication is intended for mass distribution, it's not to be altered in any way. You may copy it for your personal use or forward it to people whom you feel may benefit from receiving it, or you may post it to any newsgroups or forums, provided you copy or post it in the same form as it was originally published and the signature and copyright information are included in full. Editors and publishers are free to reprint this article as long as previous written notice is given (email is acceptable) and it is reprinted in its entirety with the signature and copyright information included in full. If you have any questions or comments, please send us an email or visit www.inspiritrix.com for additional contact information.

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