It's all a gamble

A player goes to a casino and he or she knows that the odds of winning are basically slim and none, especially as time passes. The longer you play the better the chance you will lose. That's the nature of the casino's games as length of play equals a better chance of losing due to the house edge.

But it's not just in the casinos where we gamble. Indeed, casino gambling is a relatively harmless activity for the overwhelming majority of us. There are much bigger gambles in life, starting with the sperm that won the race to your mother's egg. That sperm desired to become something else, a human, but it had to overcome millions of other sperm thinking the exact same thing. That's the biggest lottery any of us will ever win. Once that happened then all the other gambles unfold.

As soon as you are born you start to get into the biggest gamble of them all, real life — ultimately a losing gamble because we die.

Take vitamins, run the marathon, eat the best foods, laugh, sing, dance, love; none of it makes a difference in the end. Death wins because death has the biggest house edge of all. There are no advantage players in life. The longest life by the longest-lived human of all time isn't even a drop in the ocean of time.

Oh, yes, there are good life-players who have the most fun for the longest time in human terms before exiting this stage; these gamblers are just like good basic strategy players in blackjack or good craps players betting the lowest house edge bets to stave off total defeat for a while. But winning? Can they win the game of life? Can they beat the grim reaper? It isn't in the cards. When death rolls the dice we all seven out.

That's the big picture, death beats life.

However, in all things, we face real gambles as we make choices that influence us while we play life's games. That first grade kid who is goofing off, guffawing, bothering other kids as the teacher goes over the elementary arithmetic has made the choice to be unlearned in the math department. He's gambling that he won't need that stupid math — even though he is unaware that he is in fact making choices that will dictate certain future circumstances in his life.

The idiots in school tend to become the idiots in life, with some exceptions.

Look at the kids who prefer to waste their time with trivial television programs rather than reading books; they close the door on an entire world of learning and exploration. Their future world closes more tightly around them and their choices become ever more limited.

Whom you date; whether you smoke; whom you marry; where you live are all gambles you take having considered whatever choices you have. You place your bets on these things and you reap the rewards or punishments.

Almost all bets in life come with problems and so many of these wagers are losers. Life is more like a slot machine than a blackjack game — the house edge is immense against us.

Consider this: almost all relationships you have with the opposite sex end in breaking up. The list of former girl friends and former boy friends often compiles a personal yellow pages for most people. Just go through all the men or women you have dated. You didn't marry almost all of them and they didn't marry you.

And what about marriage? Fifty percent end in divorce. Remarriage? Divorce dominates that terrain as well. Our relations with the opposite sex are fraught with danger. Maybe that's why we say the "opposite" sex. Marriage is the Megabucks of life's gambles. We want it to be wonderful and beautiful but few marriages are that if the divorce statistics have any validity. I am guessing in the gay and lesbian world these statistics hold as well.

Life's gambles are rarely presented to us as such. But think about it; all choices are gambles. How will the choices you make turn out? Place your bets and watch the wheels spin.

Walk around your neighborhood. Are all the people in all those houses happy with the choices they have made? Are they satisfied that the gambles they took panned out the way they wanted them to? I'm guessing more people have more regrets than they do satisfactions.

I think the framers of the Declaration of Independence had it right when they wrote that we have the right to the "pursuit of happiness," something we all try to do all the time with some success and many failures. No one can promise happiness as a right, after all. That would be wrong.

As you read this you know that you still have many gambles to take. Give some thought to what they are and to what strategies will give you the best chance to win them.

Oh, and good luck.