Against The Odds

"I don't want to have to play a game with people. I'm not good at games (poker, baseball, billiards, flirtation, self-promotion, etc.)- I don't understand them. When I do play (for who of us is not forced from time to time to play some game or other?), I always bet with my eyes partially closed, hoping (trusting) that through osmosis I have developed enough muscle memory to substitute for my terrible lack of strategy. Because that's just the thing, I have no strategy - I don't seem to have learned from my experience of games. I'm not good at them. I don't want to play. But I have to."

A couple of years ago, I made this complaint to a great friend of mine. His response:

"Complaining about the gameyness of this world is like complaining that the ocean is wet." 

And he is absolutely correct. Survival in a sense is a game. We don't usually treat it as such, but it is. We are all dealt a hand and we must through a series of trials, risks, successes, and failures, play that hand to fruition, sometimes against the odds, so that in the end, when we all cash in, we can walk away with a sizable bank of worthwhile memories. To complain about the gameyness of life is to complain about life as it is.

But isn't that the first, the ultimate, and the most fundamental complaint? I regularly duke it out with the wind - we're not on the same team. Gravity, that old shark, is sitting right across from me, counting cards. Old age is an enormously convincing bluffer. 

Descartes has said that man's problem is his limited knowledge at odds with his limitless will. That seems to be according to him where error comes from. I believe there is a natural drive in all of us to desire absolute freedom for human beings. Freedom from the elements, from the gravity and decay of our own bodies, from the very fact of the mind-body complexity. And those of us who are sensitive to this, often feel an injustice at being made to endure a reality that is so sub-par to our noblest imaginings.

 

Maybe even the human desire for legacy (through children and personal records alike) is a vain striving against all odds to win out against our finitude.

And why shouldn't we complain that the ocean is wet? Or that the ocean is one way or the other? It is a great offense that anything is determined to be exactly what it is - an offense older than history, a primeval offense. We deserve better.