Life's A Game Poem by Javier Falcon

Most people write about life, making false analogies on how life works. Only to complicate the simple routine in which life revolves around. As for me I found what life was like just by sitting down with a couple of gentlemen for a round of poker last night. Thinking I could leave all my worries aside and move to something which would keep me busy from my problems. Only to be struck by the thought of how everything in this world has a simple answer, you either fold or check/bet, just like in this poker game. There is only one correct decision, one final outcome, with one lucky person to keep it all. Or that person who slips on a mistake and loses even his name. Leaving us to think, why do we humans complicate the image of how life is viewed? Especially when it can be explained in such a simple manner. The game of poker is as Protean as life in many aspects. You can take any table where poker is being played and you will see that the game is never the same, the cards seem to adapt to the players around them; and like this you can take out a group of people in any part of the world and see that their lives are not the same. Each adds their own spice to it. We adjust our lives to our surroundings like our cards and playing styles at the playing table. And being so different we still cause more divisions among ourselves. Could it be human nature that we as a race have such simple lives and only seem to make it harder on each other by discriminating. Poker players also do this by labeling each other with experience levels: from novice to expert and poker style. Like the players of the game we have plenty at stake waiting on our decision, leading us to consider hard on what we are doing. Some of us lose it all, while others just pick up the chips from their last victory. Leaving the unfortunate to complain about life, and those who win to enjoy their assets and being left with the thirst for more. As the wise Jonathan Swift once stated. 'I must complain the cards are ill shuffled till I have a good hand.' This reflects we are never happy with what life hands us, even if its covered in gold. Managing to complain on any matter, questioning why we were handed this instead of that, or why couldn't I have the life the other person has and so on. But sometimes its just a phase and the luck is just a hand away. As anyone who acknowledges themselves as a winner has never encountered a poker table. Even so, that is not the only reason why poker resembles real life, since as you are sitting there playing your opponents by character you learn that they are unique and hard to decipher. Like in life you come to face many people, each with their own way of handling things and personalities. Some will play in your favor and others will either rise or fall in an outright confrontation with you. Even against the odds and with so many opponents at the poker table, and so many problems and considerations in life respectively; consider that you can still manage to say that life is over complicated by many. As life is a poker game and at the end of the day, we go home with a little more experience to solve this complex puzzle. In the very word of C Arel, 'Poker is like life, most people don't learn from their mistakes, they only recognize them.' And like this both poker and life will coincide with the heart of their players until this simple riddle of life is solved.