The Hell of Gambling

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Hey good people, I am almost out of the woods with my allergies. I am coughing a lot less, and my sinus are not erupting like they were. Thank goodness it is almost over.

And, I got to celebrate last night with a couple of glasses of Moscato because my grading for UB is complete! The semester is officially over for me, and I can enjoy my summer chapter.

Well, there is a lot of gambling going on. Of course, there is the regular, age-old casino gambling, where people lose their shirt, car, rent, mortgage, and families due to their addiction, due to the overriding belief that they can persevere and win it all, over and over again.

And the houses are more than ready to oblige them, filling them with food, drinks, and a place to crash, to come down and do it all over again. They love addiction. It feeds them, makes their bellies full.

In the film Bingo Hell, a darkened figure comes to the Oak Ridge community, “replacing” the old owner of the Bingo Hall, and opening up a spruced-up version with the humongously enticing purses of 1,000, 10,000, and 100,000 smackeroonies. However, each winner does not live to truly enjoy the fruits of their winnings. Their fears and weaknesses turn on them, as they meet their fate. Their vanity, greed, and selfishness become a weapon, and brutally they expire.

In various times of our lives, we all gamble for something that is seemingly unattainable, that one ticket – any variety of lottery tickets – that we pray will lift us from our sea of debts, and catapult us to a new life. If we can just hit that one number, we can pay it all off, move out of our neighborhoods, and live the life about which we have dreamed for so long.

It is kind of similar to the hit series Squid Game, another depiction of how one is willing to play to the death to be absolved of their debts. It is the fight to the finish, where the only one left standing will receive the ultimate prize, leaving behind the carnage, as each victim reveals their deepest and darkest secrets.

And perhaps that is one of the features of gambling, that if we can win that ultimate prize, make the huge payday, that we can wipe away all of our faults, dark and sinister thoughts, our egregious behavior, our reprehensible conduct – or at least pave them over with something shiny and new.

But it always amounts to gambling on the external, not working on the internal, to make the gold shine within us. We don’t feel that way about ourselves, and instead look for outside forces to give us what we need. We gamble on their good graces, their favor, their promises of a better life, their sales pitch of a new lifestyle, and if we give ourselves to them, they guarantee that it will all come true – until it doesn’t.

So, the Bingo participants didn’t merely walk into Bingo Hell, they carried it with them, buried deep inside their souls, ready to be plucked. Had they resolved their stuff, and found the gold within, that house of ill repute would not have attracted them, and if they happened to end up there, would have repelled anything sinister offered to them, because they would have wiped away the veneer, and saw it for what it was.

How many of us over the course of our lives have been in similar situations, where we were so troubled inside that we allowed the veneer to blind us, and we walked into situations that were detrimental to us, and it played out that way? I know I have. I even cast aside my gut reaction, because I was needy, hungry, thirsty, wanting, and it always turned sour for me. I either had to dig myself out of a bad situation, or I walked away deeply disappointed, even crushed. 

Each time another such opportunity presented itself, I said to myself maybe this time…and then…nothing…or worse. I walked away with scars, which should have served as lessons. But often I was slow to understand them as such, and I continued to suffer, until one day I said, no mas. I dug down deep within myself and started building. Then I found my internal gold, and then I began to repel those false shiny things presented to me. I began getting stronger. My back straightened, and I felt more resolved.

Now each year presents itself with a myriad of new or more difficult situations to test my mettle, as it is with all of us. That is where we can see where we are in our internal fortitude, so that we are not foolishly gambling ourselves. The more we know, the more we learn, the more we grow, the more we are responsible for, and the bigger the challenges become. Each time we are better prepared, and when each time we get knocked down, we are more resolved to get back up and go again.

Hopefully, we can assist others to find their own gold, their own internal strength and fortitude, so they can stop gambling their lives away. We also need to be mindful of boundaries, to assist, but not get sucked into their drama, because it is their own path they have to walk, and though we may give them tools along the way, they have to trudge along until they get to where they need to be.

The Oak Ridge residents did rescue themselves from that Bingo Hell, and the darkened figure did perish. They realized that the community they built resided within themselves, and no matter where they settled, they would always have that with them. They did not have to stay stuck in one area and be beholden to that. As I have always said, you are your safe space, and now I say, your gold is within you, and wherever you go, you will have it.

The best gamble is on yourself, for yourself, and when you do that, you will always win.