When the Stakes Are Everything

What does it mean to have a ‘bad day?’

Of course, many things can ‘go wrong’ in a single day and thus cause you to feel like it was a bad one.

But why do things go wrong? What does it mean for things to go wrong?

I once heard a monk say:

“What is stress? Stress is the gap between expectation and reality.”

When we single out a day and say it was bad, what we’re really saying is:

“This was a day full of unmet expectations. This was a day where the events of my life did not go according to my wishes.”

Picture yourself, right now, having a bad day. Now multiply that by a thousand.

What is going on?

Are you getting fired from your job? Is a family member dying? Is your partner breaking up with you?

When I was younger, I played an online battle royale game called Apex Legends. One of the characters would utter an interesting phrase as he dropped into the battlefield to fight other players in this hunger-games style situation:

“I feel most alive when rapidly approaching my death.”

The phrase stuck with me because I found it so odd.

You are on the brink of losing everything — including the ultimate thing — your life. Why would now be the time that you feel the “most alive?”

Indeed, should we not feel the most alive when things are comfortable? When things are going to plan?

But life is a funny thing.

Not only does it rarely give you what you want,

But even when you get it,

Something always feels off. You almost never feel the way you thought you would.

And even when you do, how long does the feeling it last? A week? A day? A second?

We think bad days are the ones where things don’t go to plan. But when does anything ever really go to plan?

Now, imagine yourself not just having a bad day,

But the worst possible day. A day so bad, you almost can’t comprehend it.

Imagine what it would be like to lose everything.

All your family. All your friends. All your wealth. All your creature comforts.

Your heart continues to beat. Your mind continues to work. Your physical body remains alive.

But you have, effectively, died.

It’s not like you had any other option. Indeed, if all your relationships and possessions have be taken from you. Then what is left?

Just you, right? But who are you?

Before losig everything, did you realise that this thing called you — your identity — was wrapped deeply, deeply in all the things that were taken from you.

You were not a thing that existed until you built your sense of self. An identity built through

Your friends,

Your family,

Your job,

Your achievements.

And now that all of it has been taken from you,

What is left?

If a person really did lose everything in such a way, what other choice would they have but to go insane?

The world they once knew disappeared in the blink of an eye. They woke up to find themselves not on Earth, but on another planet.

Perhaps you find all this imagery rather dystopian.

But is it really so?

Did you really lose everything, or

Did you just become free from it all?

Free from the expectations of others? Free from your own expectations to live a certain life?

Was your loss really a loss, or did you just free yourself — from yourself?

If, one day, you were to really lose everything, would it not be a beautiful thing?

If such a thing were to occur, you’d surely feel more alive on that day than you have ever felt before.

You are rebirthed. You have been born again; and, what epitomises life more than a new-born?

Let me ask you something:

Would you gamble your own child’s life at the casino? No.

So why do you gamble your own life every day that you live?

Why have you created an identity and unending list of expectations for yourself? Every day, you gamble your peace — your state of existence — on things going the right way for you.

We make plans for things. We have hopes. We have dreams. We have emotional investment in all that we do.

The stakes are always everything, because they always include you.

So, what happens when you lose? When you lose everything?

Maybe you become wise. Maybe you realise a life of hopes, dreams, and expectations is a loser’s game. A game where the House, in the end, always wins.

And you, in the end,

Always lose.

The price of wisdom is pain.

When life takes everything from you, it in fact gives you a chance to reclaim your freedom.

Something lived. Something then died. Something was reborn.

Will you now return to the casino, or

Will your life be something else?