card game

We're dealt the cards and we play the game. I've got my hand, I hold
it up, fan it out and play my life. This is me. I am the stake that is
bet.

I am holding: a male, a mediocre upbringing, a good IQ, a couple of
traumas, good genes, poor education, low self-esteem?it could be a
winning hand, but it's doubtful, depends what everyone else has
got.

We eye each other across the table. It's a long game; goes on about 70
years and will make losers of us all in the end. We play for a 'life' -
before death comes and stakes his claim. A 'life', which is measured by
the value of our different hands. What we all want are the winning
cards, the popular cards, they make us feel good. And feeling good is
winning.

And yet I don't feel good, the game is unwinable. All I wanted was a
life worth living and yet somehow, like the others, I was tricked into
this stupid game. I'm betting my life on cards which aren't worth it,
I'm bluffing and cheating in order to even the odds, and I know that
all I can do is lose because winning isn't enough. The cards I'm
holding aren't good enough to win the life I want, so I ask myself, why
am I even bothering to play?

These cards aren't me, how can they be, I never wanted them nor asked
for them. If I had my way I would never have dealt myself these cards.
I would have had a tall, a handsome, an amazing musician, a rich, an
intelligent...

I see death, abuse, suffering and heartache -to name but a few - being
dealt out. They're ugly and useless cards and, even worse, lives are
being staked on them. Pain and suffering are laid down with a flourish,
the player- in their need to win - having defaced the cards, written
bravado and carefree across them. I hate this game.

I watch the cycle of winning and losing, losing and winning and
gradually, over years, the truth dawns on me; there are no winners now,
nor will there ever be. It only feels as if we're about to win because
we're mesmerised by the value of the stakes, but the stakes are the
only things that matter.

I reach forward and pick myself up off the table. "You can't do that"
say the others "that's breaking the rules."
"It's only breaking the rules, if I'm playing the game" I reply. And
with that I push my chair back, get up, and walk away. As I pass a bin,
on the way out, I throw my cards into it. They are nothing to do with
me.