THE CHOICES
You do have two choices:
1. Play the cards you were dealt and create the best life you can have (which will be
a good life!)
2. Don't play the cards to create the best life you can have
Does it make sense to choose the latter?
It doesn't relieve you of anything, as you still need to do what is needed to live a good life. Even if you are totally pessimistic, at least playing the cards to win has to increase the odds - no one can deny that.
IT'S A RACKET, NOT A REALITY
One can waste his/her entire life by wishing things were different and by complaining about the cards the he/she was dealt. Indeed, there is only one reasonable choice, the other one being to not play the cards to win or not play them at all - a game called the Victim Game one of the "rackets" that people pull on themselves. One cannot live a great life if one lets circumstances or other people dictate one's life.
REGARDLESS OF CIRCUMSTANCES
People have chosen to play the cards they were dealt have created magnificent lives, despite being crippled, suffering from depression early on, having terrible childhoods, experiencing huge disasters. Look at the proof of the "possibility" (the alternative that is available and possible) in Bad Past, Good Life (and do not seek to prove that this is not true, for you will be stuck in a mire, going nowhere, just resisting, failing to choose the aliveness choice).
As much as one can use one's past to justify why it is hopeless and why the future is fixed, one is still left with the necessity to play the cards to win - or to just intentionally do nothing to win, and hope that somehow luck or someone else will rescue them - in that case you're likely to end up with just a bad hand, one that you could have played to live life at the highest. (Read Justifications, Excuses...if you continue to justify, all you'll end up with are your justifications...)
Unless you're dealt a hand with no reasonably functioning brain, the only truth is that you can "respond" (="responsible") to any hand you're dealt to create happiness:
"Right now, at this very moment, we have a mind, which is all the basic equipment we need to achieve complete happiness."
The Dalai Lama, in The Art Of Happiness.
COMMENTS, QUOTES, AND LINKS TO GO TO
Finish this concept completely, so you'll never return to playing the Victim Game.
________
"Well, for some, life is like that hand of cards, no matter what you get, you must learn to live with it, and make the best of it." From Play With The Cards You Are Dealt; read the article.
_________
I let the slide linger, so the audience could follow the arrows and count my tumors. “All right,” I said. “That is what it is. We can’t change it. We just have to decide how we’ll respond. We cannot change the cards we were dealt, just how we play the hand.“ Randy Pausch, From The Last Lecture - Full Video, Reprise - On Oprah,
_________
Stephen Hawking - Totally paraplegic, totally awesome. Zero-Gravity Video. "My expectations were reduced to zero when I was 21. Everything since then has been a bonus". "It is a waste of time to be angry about my disability. One has to get on with life and I haven't done badly. People won't have time for you if you are always angry or complaining. " "The victim should have the right to end his life, if he wants. But I think it would be a great mistake. However bad life may seem, there is always something you can do, and succeed at. While there's life, there is hope. "
_________
"Dealt great cards….not everyone has been dealt great cards in life. Some born into riches. Some earned their riches. Some lost the riches they were born into. Some never had riches and seems implausible to attain any riches in life.
Yet while visiting Africa this summer I noticed joyful people without riches. They were not dealt good cards in life. That did not seem deterred, detained or discouraged. They made lemonade out of life’s lemons.
I was inspired deeply by them. Likewise, I was troubled deeply by how I reacted and acted when life dealt me a poor hand of cards.
My wife loves lemonade, and the next time she orders lemonade at a restaurant or makes it fresh at home, it will remind me to convert any card I am dealt in life into a winning hand by intentionally adjusting my attitude and remembering the inspiring people in Africa. Play the cards I was dealt.
If you agree that life is a gamble, when life deals a poor hand of cards to you, what will you do? Will you play? How will you play?" Greg Heeres
