LetÂ’s play a game.
There is no name to this game. It doesnÂ’t need to have one, sure you can give it a name if you want, but in the end, it doesnÂ’t really matter. The rules and game pieces are very, very simple.
First, the game pieces: There is a great big wheel mounted on a wall, withÂ…letÂ’s sayÂ….5,000 spaces on it. Think of the Price is Right, or maybe one of those wheels you spin where you get a hat or a shirt or a gift card if the wheel stops on the marker. YouÂ’ve seen them at the mall, or a fair, or Las Vegas in the casinos. YouÂ’re wheel will be different than mine. EveryoneÂ’s wheel is different. The health history of your family could limit your wheel to 3,000 spaces. Your personal health could lower it to 1,000 spaces. You might have 10,000 spaces. The thing is, you will never know how many spaces your wheel has until the game is over. To start out, every space on your wheel is green.
Second, the rules to the game: Every day, you get a small gift, as many as you want. These gifts can last as little as 10 minutes or it could last as long as a couple of hours. It could be just a great feeling, the same as you get when you eat a fresh baked cookie. It could be as big as a huge stress relief after taking some exams. Maybe it’s just a pacifying feeling as you take on an 8 hour drive. Some days there are 5 or 6 “gifts”. Some days there are only 1 or 2. But just like the number of spaces on the wheel, everyone’s gifts are different. They are what you make of them. Sure, you can survive life without the gifts, but why wouldn’t you take the easier way? Here comes the rule: for every gift you take, you must spin the wheel. Remember, your wheel is 100% green to start. After each spin, wherever your wheel lands, that space turns to red and an envelope is placed underneath it. You know that the envelopes contain something bad. You’ve heard from other people about the red envelopes….
Third, to win the game: spin the wheel after each gift and land on a green space. The game is over when you land on a red space. No more gifts and you “win” the card that is under the red space.
That’s it. That’s all there is to this game. Sounds simple, right? Would you play this game? It sounds great. Every day, you get to circumvent problems, feel good just for the heck of it, relieve stress, think more clearly, etc. Each gift is the “magic elixir” you need to make your day better. Whatever you need at that moment, voila, the answer appears. Yeah, you are in. Why didn’t you start playing the game before? Before you know it, you can’t live your life without these gifts. These fixes for life’s ills, what would you do without them? You depend on them. You get nervous when you think of going on without them. So you keep playing. Day after day after day, the game and you are one. However, with each spin of the wheel, your green spaces are eaten up. One by one, they slowly fade away. Your green wheel is slowly but surely growing red spaces all over it. Doesn’t matter to you though. The red envelopes loom large, but you need to fix your life. You keep spinning and spinning and spinning…until one day, you finally lose. Your luck has run out and with a dwindling number of green spaces to land on, red has finally hit and your game is over….
As the saying goes, there is no free lunch. The game is a delusion, a figment of your imagination. However, the results are real. Underneath each of those red spaces on your wheel, the envelopes that you “win” are real. Randomly picked, just for you, from a select group of choice items: Mouth cancer. Throat cancer. Pulled teeth. Lost jaws. Dentures. Cut out tongues. For the really lucky ones, death. You knew what was in those envelopes. You knew the chances. You saw the pictures on the web. You heard the stories from family members. Your wife warned you. Your mother warned you. But you played anyway. The odds, what were my odds. Did I check? Did I really know?
LetÂ’s call this game what it really is. A sick and twisted game of Russian Roulette. However instead of a revolver with 6 chambers, we have a really random and gigantic game of whack-a-mole. Is the hammer finally going to land on you? Those green spaces on the wheel were just the lucky times that cancer didnÂ’t hit you like that hammer. The longer you go, the longer you play the game, the better your odds of coming down with a scourge that you may or may not be able to beat.
Are you going to take that chance? Are you going to play the game? I played that game for 15 years. However I decided that my wheel was red enough. I never knew when my luck would run out. I got wise and knew that I was addicted to the game. If you are reading this, you are addicted to the game. Do you still think itÂ’s worth playing? Are you willing to stop spinning the wheel?
