poker

Poker can be a fun but extremely frustrating game. It does not comprise purely of chance of skill. An article from The Economist argues that it is primarily the latter. I'd say that you've gotta give lady luck more credit. On any given hand you can play it to a tee, but if the player across from you just happens to have the right combination and the flop is unforgiving, you can be SOL.

There are a lot of elements in poker you can control, but there will always be some you can't. You may have other player's tells down or can read their tendencies. The odds can be overwhelmingly in your favour. In the end though, there are some things that you can't control... including that excruciating last card. That's why it's called gambling.

In a way, life is kind of similar. I think back to when I was growing up, and countless books, TV shows and movies I read or saw had a pretty common message - do the right thing, and you'll reap the rewards. The protagonist will go through some pain and suffering, but by the end, the universe has corrected itself so that our hero wins. So when we're raised on these kinds of stories, it's a bit of a rude awakening when things don't go our way, often despite our best intentions. We can play life's cards perfectly, knowing most of the variables in front of us, or at least taking into account most factors. Every now and then, something just happens. And there's nothing that we can do about it. Worse yet, it's often undeserved or unfair. What then?

For a while, I never thought much of the phrase "when life gives you lemons, you make lemonade". I always took it to mean to be optimistic, or to make the most of a bad situation. Yeah, it's partly about that message but I feel like it relates more to what I said above. Sometimes we get dealt the worst cards, or something absurd happens to us that makes us feel wronged or treated unfairly. I've learned that life isn't just about choosing what direction to take when there's a fork in the road; arguably it's shaped more by how we deal with situations in which we had no control. We can't always say no to the lemons. Sometimes it's thrown in our face and we're stuck with them.

That's when you make lemonade.