Playing Cards

For years I had a Peanuts cartoon on our refrigerator, where Lucy demands of Snoopy, “How can you stand being a dog?” Snoopy responds, “You play with the cards you’re dealt…whatever that means.”

My husband and I were having a discussion at breakfast this morning about this life approach. Playing with the cards you are dealt has many subtle insights.

First, you have to reconcile yourself to the fact that taking someone else’s cards is generally cheating unless you are playing some variation of Old Maid. Even then it is orderly and expected.

Second, while you are busy being envious of someone else’s cards, you are not engaged in the Game of Life. You are sidelined. Get back in the Game.

Third, you have no idea what cards others actually hold. All you can see is the backs of the cards. They may be shiny and new, or scuffed and worn, but you have no idea if they hold four aces or two threes, an eight, and a one-eyed Jack. The same is true of others’ lives. What looks like a charmed, successful life may be falling apart on the inside. The only life you truly have a chance of living is your own.

There is a reason why you were dealt the “cards” you have. Figure out what it means to “play” them in the Game of Life.