Playing The Hand We Are Dealt
I once had a guest speaker at one of our yearly kickoff events at a dealership I was running who said “how do you know what you are going through now is a devastating event until you get to the other side of the event to see what happens?” Now that made me stop and think.
If you have ever played Texas Hold 'em, you can certainly understand having to play a terrible hand. In Hold 'em, you are dealt two cards for yourself and then you share the five cards that the dealer eventually turns over. The first turn by the dealer is for three cards that is called “the flop”. The next card is called “the turn” and the final card is called “the river”.
In this game, the betting, or initial ante, is made when you are the small blind or the big blind. This means that you are the one of two players to put the ante in the pot. The small blind puts in half of the amount the big blind has to put in. When you actually play the hand, whoever antes the big blind goes last and the small blind plays next to last. It’s important to understand that the last two players have an advantage as they know what the players in front of them are doing.. This causes the big blind and the small blind players to often play terrible hands. Their money is already in the pot, so they are simply playing the hand they are dealt. Many times, if no one else has raised the bet, it’s their money in the middle so it doesn’t really matter if they are playing a terrible hand – they continue to play the hand they are dealt.
Isn’t that how life is sometimes? We just play the hand we are dealt. We may not have wanted a divorce after 23 years of marriage. We play the hand we are dealt. We may not have wanted to change jobs, but our company downsized. We play the hand we are dealt. We may not have wanted to lose our best friend, but we play the hand we are dealt.
Sometimes the events we are walking through are simply events we need to go through to make us better as we come out of the storm on the other side. Life changing events can truly be devastating however, sometimes it’s exactly what we needed. We end up finding ourselves in a better place or situation in our lives. This doesn’t mean there won’t be pain as these events unfold, however what we went through should give us hope that we will overcome and even excel once we reach the other side.
There is not much joy when we are walking through tough times in our lives, but the outcome is not determined until we get through to the other side. As the saying goes, joy comes in the morning…we just have to wait on the morning.
