your cards

Have you ever played the card game, Black Jack? Where you try your luck with a deck of cards to get a combination totaling 21 or anything higher than the dealer of cards. I am sure you have since it is probably the most widely played card game in virtually any casino in the world.

In a nutshell, the dealer gives you two cards. What you do is to look at the total of those two cards and you are given the option to keep on taking cards to a maximum of five cards. Once you are done taking your cards, you'll the pitch your total against the dealer in hope to have a total more than him (assuming you don't blow your way past 21).

I never really liked this game since you place most of your winning chances on luck since you'll never really know what cards you get until you take which most of the time mean it is too late especially when your current total is 16 and you end up taking a 6! You'd be surprised how often this happens with gamblers, always attracting Murphy's Law.

So now, how does this relate to people like you and me who don't usually gamble or not gamble at all altogether?

Forget the money making or the money losing aspect of the game for now but let us really look at how a game called Black Jack can teach us a bit accepting our lives and circumstances around it.

We all go about our lives doing what we need to do, whether it's studying, working, buying groceries and so on and so forth but at the end of the day what and who we are today are sometimes the very result of the cards you and I were dealt with earlier in our lives. Of course I don't literally mean a deck of cards given to us but rather cards that metaphorically describe circumstances surrounding our lives.

I too have had to work with cards that I was dealt with. Many people have always ask me why is it that my older brother studied overseas while I studied locally. As much as three quarters of the population of this country think that studying overseas makes a hell of a difference, I tend to beg to differ. Any place you go to is only as good as the people you know in it, or at least that is my belief.

Anyway, back to my hand of cards I was dealt with. The answer to the question is simple - my parents couldn't afford sending me overseas to study. Not without having to take a study loan. So I decided to simply make the best of what I have, that is to study locally by way of looking for the best college I could find based on the limited budget I had to work with.

In hindsight, I think I turned out alright. I graduated successfully and I have a job (not the best job I can find but it'll help me survive and put food on the table).

I know for a fact that if back then I insisted on studying overseas, my parents would have taken the loan for me and sent me overseas but in my mind it was a really a question of whether it was completely necessary? I studied accounting, which means I didn't have any use for high tech labs or high tech science facilities. All I needed was good books and a library filled with those good books. The rest of it was up to me.

I speak to a lot of my friends who studied overseas and I take a glance and ask myself some of these questions:

1. Does he have a degree any better than mine? Not really.

2. Does he have a job that pays better? Not really.

3. Is his progression faster than mine? Not really.

4. Is he any better at handling stress? Not really.

5. Is he markedly different in work quality? Not really.

6. So then, did I make the right choice in not studying overseas? I would say, yes considering there isn't much difference between me and those who went overseas.

Hence, you can't get everything you want in this short life span of our's but you can get try to make the best of everything you have in this short life span. Bad situation or good situation, that's up to you to decide. If you are going to sit down thinking of your circumstances as bad, that's exactly how it is going to be until and unless you tell yourself otherwise.

You have your own cards, what cards you get is the will of God (if you do believe in one). Work with what you have and God might just decide do deal you one real good card in the near future.

So what are your cards?