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2nd Edition...
"Life consists not in holding good cards but in playing those you hold well" - Josh Billings
So, what say you about this statement?
Some of you are big card players (you even excercise your Christian liberty this way sometimes). How do you play a hand that holds no pairs, or just deuces, or a "farmer's hand"?
What about playing "partner's best?"
Is this State Prosecution Exhibit 1A for over cliched statement that's easy to say than do?
Is it even possible? How do you know if you've played your cards "well"?
I eagerly anticipate your repsonse and the discussion to follow....
11 comments:
I like these kinds of questions, Brian. They're broad, so they get me thinking about many different things.
I think life is more like, "Here are fifty-two cards. There may be one or two missing from the deck, but they're all face up. You can choose whatever five cards you want. If they don't work for you, you can exchange them for any other cards as many time as you want until you die. The only other rule is that you have to play the cards you choose. If you don't, you lose."
Whoa...I gotta unpack that.
Starting through your comment I got the impression that you were saying your life decisions can allow you to change the cards you've been dealt. Whether good as in the typical All-American "Pursuit of Happyness" sort of life or for the worse where you get it all and lose it, as in get "Munsoned"
But then your last sentence confused me. It leads me to believe that you are saying there is a point in time where we no longer can pick our cards, it is what it is at that point, and if you fail to play from there, you're done.
Seems contradictory. Am I missing something? Not making the connection?
Maybe you're thinking too much about my analogy. I was just trying to use the same terminology as the quote you gave.
I'm saying, we choose our own destiny, and we can change our path as many times as we want. I often pick my cards and then don't play them. That's always a losing hand. I think my analogy was more about risk and just doing it.
I gotcha on that.
I think I would not go so far as to say "we choose our own destiny" but I do agree that we can change the cards we've been dealt.
You know what though, what if we've always been dealt those cards, we just choose not to play them? As in, it looks like we've been dealt crap based on what we were born into, but really we weren't and we just can't get over ourselves enough to see what it is we actually have.
We don't and can't change the cards we've been dealt, we've had them all along, we just screwed it up for ourselves.
Yeah, I hear you, Brian. I used to think that everyone had a destiny -- things like "Laura was meant for me and vice versa." I used to think everything was preordained and that things were meant to be. The reason I thought these things was because of the intense degree of pleasure and complexity I receive from things without effort.
I've been trained to think that a lot of hard work and dedication is the only way to produce something Grand. Think of a business as one's pride and joy.
Thing that take less effort but are absolutely superb, we call "talents" or "gifts from God." The brain says, "Okay, this talent exists, and it doesn't come from me, so it is a supernatural gift."
Likewise, "This beautiful son I have had nothing to do with my efforts (as far as the work to production ratio goes), therefor he is the result of a supernatural destiny or gift from God.
That's the way the human mind works: cause and reaction. Effort and production. It makes destiny so believable.
I think the "if this" then "that" relationship is an illusion with many things in our lives. My relationship with Laura sometimes sucks, because sometimes I am a shitty person. Would I say in that moment that it was meant to be? No, I blame myself -- not destiny -- not God. For the same reason, I give myself permission to think that what "is" is a result of actions. The actions are the kinds of cards I have. The cards themselves, in your analogy, would be my limitations as a human. If I were disabled from birth, I'd still be playing with a full deck... it's just that the game might be Go Fish.
I'm not sure where to draw the destiny line. I'm not convinced that from the onset of life Michele and I were meant to be. But there did come point where that became a reality. At that point I either played a card I was holding or not play it and my life would be different (for better or worse?).
I agree with you that the fact that the globe is full of marriages of people who "majically" met each other, fell in love, and bring a long and lustrious past with them naturally lends itself to "it must have been meant to be." But I thing that attitude is more a result of the Western World way of thinking than on an actual global scale.
Regardless of all that, what would happen to that card if I hadn't played it then? If I did not choose Michele?
I know our conversation is all over the place but I also want to add that I'm not so sure that we all get dealt a full deck either. I think the game is always the same, but the cards we all get are different.
And I also want to add that all my talents, I believe are a gift from God, regardless if they come easy to me or I have to work at them. Regardless if I am born with them or have learned them over the time.
Which laboriously leads me to there are some cards we just won't have the chance to play. I just won't ever "get it" no matter how hard I try. And that failure is also a gift from God.
Which is why I believe destiny has a factor, but I'm not sure where to draw the line.
That card wasn't Michele. The card was "a relationship." So if it hadn't been Michele, it would have been someone else -- and you would have been just as content with her as you are with Michele. It would not have been THE SAME relationship, but it would have been a unique relationship that fulfills everything that defines the card.
You're right. Some cards we don't get a chance to play. Who knows! I might be the best water polo player on earth -- or at least have the potential for it. I can't play that card, because I'm only allowed to play the cards of the hand. It's still a choice -- not destiny, because I could trade the blogging card for the water polo card.
Destiny isn't a difficult topic. Our destiny as an individual is death. Fate and coincidence within our lives are illusions that something has a meaning that it doesn't have.
When it's raining and cloudy and dark, and I suggest that I wish it were sunny -- and then within a minute the clouds part and the sun shines, did my wish have a connection to the weather?
Coincidence implies no. Destiny implies that some outside force synchronized my wish and the weather for a purpose. If this case were true, then my choice in weather preference wasn't my own.
And this leads to a very deep and interesting topic. What makes my choices *MY* choices? What stops my choices from being a simple cause-effect of something else's preference? The answer to that question would resolve some very serious questions.
Evolution says that we are the products of the laws of nature. We are a complex response to the laws of cause. In essence, nothing I choose is really my own, independent choice.
On the other hand, think of people who believe that they are created evil and can not choose good. It is not their choice to choose God, right? It is a calling, a choice by some greater power.
The conclusion I have is that if these to premises are true, then no one can be judged for their actions. All actions are the result of laws or deities.
We, however, find this so against our intuiting that my definitions must be wrong. So what is true?
How does anyone know anything about how my life would be if I hadn’t played the “relationship” card with Michele? Is it quite possible that my life sucks right now compared to what it could have been? My humanity right now convinces me that all is right and no way could it be better, so at the very best, things would have been just the same if I hadn’t chose Michele. But no one knows that.
The problem is that things like destiny, fate, and coincidence are figments of our imagination. It makes us feel good. To some it even gives purpose to life. When things are going good, it’s like everything was aligned to be that way and party on. When things aren’t going so good it allows us an excuse to try and run and find our “destiny.” It makes it much, much easier to feel good about ourselves as well as wallow in our own self-pity. It lends credence to feelings of “I just knew it was meant to be” (Really, how do you know that? Did you get to time travel and check on that?) or “I could feel it in my bones” (Really, a lot of people have felt a lot of things that didn’t do much good for anyone) or “No way could something so spectacular as you and me meeting not have been fate” (Really, because it happens everywhere all the time. People from diverse and totally different backgrounds or the same backgrounds, meeting across the globe and hooking up.) It also makes for great movies, magical story telling, profound poetry, and transformational music. How boring would they all be if it wasn’t a premise? But not everything is all already figured for me. My mom and dad may have allowed for me a place at the table, but the results still aren’t in.
Don’t get me wrong, we all have a destiny. And some elements of our life are figured out for us. Namely, we’ll live and we’ll die. And because I am a Neo-Fundamentalist, our eternal destiny is determined by one and only one card and whether or not we play it. I think you were too generalized in your classification of people into only 2 camps. I do believe we are all born evil, BUT chose to believe in Jesus. I’m not here to argue predestination. Although you can kind of figure out where I come out in that argument. Just as I was dealt a relationship card and it was up to me to play it, I was dealt a “believe in Jesus” card and I chose to play it. (Are people dealt a “Muder your mom” or a “commit mass genocide” card and maybe they were never meant to played.)
At that point, all of sudden, my fate was reversed and the rules changed for me. The card game was the same, but I’m operating under a different set of rules. How I play my cards from that point on begin to shape and mold some elements of my destiny. Also, once I played that card, I was compelled to try and fight and strive and try anything to get those that haven’t played the card to play it. And even then, there are good ways and bad ways to do that. But I’m trying to avoid a Christianity argument here.
How good or bad we have it in the afterlife is determined by how we play the cards we’ve been given. So, we have destiny in our lives, just not as much of it as we’d like to think and no way does it manifest itself within our human lives.
This is why I got out of Philosophy.
Aside from the semantics (and I'm not saying yay or nay to them), I think you hit the nail right on the head. Excellent thinking, Brian.
*ahem*
"First and foremost I would thank...."
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