Cards and Humanity
by Toni Livakovic
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Table of Contents parts: 1, 2, 3, 4 |
conclusion
“Then why hasn’t he helped us?” Derrick snarls, stomping his way back to his chair. “This piece of garbage lightbulb has been dim ever since we started playing, and soon it’s going to stop working completely.”
“It’s a tough question to answer,” Pete admits. “You know, poker is a game about smart and righteous decision-making. Maybe it’s supposed to be hard, especially under dim light, so that people can truly earn the rewards they get if they play well.”
Derrick sighs. “This game doesn’t gotta be difficult, though. Look how cruel these conditions are, man. How can the owner seriously claim that this is the best way for us to play?”
“If it wasn’t difficult, it wouldn’t be worthwhile. A poker game where you’re winning every hand in a beautiful, shining room wouldn’t mean anything to you.”
Derrick looks at his chips and scoffs, unable to see how losing most of his buy-in would be any better than winning every pot.
“I think that an enriching game, it must have a balance of everything, both good and bad,” Sidney suggests.
“The bad doesn’t happen for any greater good or purpose,” Niall contests. “Why do people think everything has to have a reason or a meaning? Some things just are.”
Hayden gulps yet another swig of beer. “We also can’t forget that this ’super kind’ owner sets us up to play something that’s naturally selfish.”
Pete scratches his head. “Maybe those selfish choices are a necessary part of our power to choose what we do each hand. Isn’t our full freedom of decision-making the most wonderful thing about poker?”
Derrick groans in fiery disagreement.
“Yeah, it’s great that we can make our own choices,” JP responds. “But I worry that if we believed in the owner, we’d avoid taking responsibility for ourselves, because we’d simply count on him to fix the light and the game.”
Pete starts to feel the heat from the group debating against him. “Guys, like I said, I personally don’t believe there’s an owner to this shop. That doesn’t mean we have to be closed-minded about it. This whole time, I’m not telling you all what to think, I’m just trying to get you to think for yourselves.”
With that, the men realize that even if the owner is out there somewhere, he will not come to save the light. Nor will they find another bulb on their own. In defeat, Pete, Hayden, and JP quietly march back to the table. Too prideful to admit it, the men all tremble in their seats, having never felt so pathetically small in a room so large.
The light will go out. There will be no more poker game. There will be no more joyous celebrations, no more heartbreaking losses, no more laughs, no more outbursts. There will be nothing left ahead, and soon nothing left behind. There will only be dark, inescapable, eternal nothingness.
At this very moment, the lightbulb begins to beam, almost blindingly bright. It’s still flickering, with unwavering certainty about its eventual end, and now shining more vibrantly than it ever had before.
The colors of the room start to come to life. The faces around the table now feel more human, and the game in front of them feels more like a real experience than an unconscious passing of the time. The room is comfortably warm and peaceful.
“Man, it’s funny,” Derrick chuckles. “I always thought the walls to this room were black. Well, now I see they’re simply... gray. It’s kinda nice.”
The others join him in light, communal laughter.
“Do you guys get what I’ve been saying now?” Marcus asks with a gentle smile. “Everything throughout the game that made you sad or worried — the bad cards, losing a lot of chips, a smart bet not working out — suddenly, it’s not so bad anymore.”
Niall nods.
Hayden stares down at the table contemplatively. “This whole time, I was sure that there was some level of winnings that would finally make me happy, that would finally make everything feel complete. Well, there’s no such thing.”
Everyone goes quiet for a few moments, with moist, reflective eyes unabashedly exposed.
“I know nobody wants this to happen,” Marcus finally says with a sigh. “But it’s really the best way it can be. The only reason our poker game means anything is because we keep in mind that it’ll end at any random time.”
“But this... this doesn’t emotionally hurt you, Marcus?” Hayden inquires.
“I think it hurts us all,” he responds. “It’s not the game ending that’s necessarily beautiful. It’s the fact that the game will end.”
Pete struggles to force a smile. “Don’t you care about leaving a legacy, though? Being remembered for your influence on the game?”
Marcus shrugs, once more showing the strength of his shoulders. “When this ends, it’s over and out for me. I’m not going to uselessly try and make a finite game into an infinite one. That defies the whole point of accepting it for what it is.”
Sidney notices Pete’s discomfort and pats him on the back. “Your poker experience will end, but other people will continue to play, even when they have forgotten about you. The poker will always continue, which is a wonderful thing.”
“Does it even matter if our game ends then?” Niall probes. “I mean, this one game of ours is really no different than the boatload of other ones that people have played and will continue to play.”
“You’re not wrong, Niall.” Marcus puffs at his cigar deeply, taking in each speck of tobacco one at a time. “This is just the way it is. The end will catch you, so you might as well stop running away and confront it face to face. Once you do that, you will truly experience the beauty of this game.”
Together, the men had come to a beautiful insight. If only they could have done so before so much time had escaped them.
“Wow, fellas. This game really is short,” JP ruminates with a sigh.
“Is it?” Marcus disputes. “Or do we just waste most of the game by not actually focusing on it? I don’t think we’d treat it any differently if it was half as long or twice as long.”
“You could be right. Either way, I think we should take this chance to reflect on how we played.”
Niall shakes his head. “There’s no point. Soon it’ll all be said and done. Plus, how would we even know if we played well? Any way we evaluate good and bad is completely unfounded.”
“There’s no way in hell we’re doing this. I mean...” Hayden’s mouth hangs open for a few seconds. “What if we don’t like what we find?”
“We can’t be scared about looking back at our game because some plays didn’t go to plan,” JP says. “Part of the experience is being able to truthfully see things for what they are. Otherwise, how can you get any peace?”
“Right, we need to review our game to get that peace,” Pete affirms. “I want to be able to recognize that I did the right things, that this was all worthwhile.”
Hayden starts to tremble and breathe heavier. “No! We’re not doing this!” He wipes away a tear instantly after it shoots out of his eye. “Don’t you see that we only got one poker game? There’s only one game, one chance to do everything to experience this to the very max. And by the time you realize what you did wrong or didn’t do at all, it’s too late.”
“Hayden, I know you’re upset—” Marcus attempts to console.
“I don’t want to hear it. Is this stack all I got to show for myself? I’ll do better this time, just please, please let me go back a few turns!”
“Come on, trooper, we talked about this. You know we can’t do that.”
Hayden rummages through his assortment of beer bottles and chugs the only one still half-full. He then succumbs to a mournful sob, the flood of long held-back tears stinging his pale, aged face.
The men offer Hayden a few pats on the back. Sometimes it is hard to tell if a viewpoint is lacking much needed perspective, or if it is merely being seen through the painful lens of reality.
Sidney radiates a warm smile. “I think the peace comes from knowing that it is OK to not have done all the right things.”
Marcus agrees. “Yeah. You have to accept the way the game went. Everything you learn about yourself, the other players, and the cards is learned from mistakes. You can’t expect to have all the answers from the start.”
“Marcus, doesn’t it trouble you that your screwups hold you back from your one chance at what could’ve been?” Hayden counters.
“Not when you realize that simply getting to play is an opportunity none of us are entitled to.”
Hayden’s weeping starts to simmer down.
“Honestly, there’s no way you can do some sorta ’final review’ that gives you some ultimate peace with the game,” Derrick objects. “You usually either leave the table suddenly, or you get so drunk that your brain can’t think straight by the end. If it’s neither of those, you’re still probably judging the game more by the latest plays, not by the whole picture.”
“Yeah, the ending is overrated,” Niall replies. “I don’t know why people who think they can judge a poker game almost exclusively look at the end, when all the other parts are equally real.”
“The both of you are right. This is why you cannot wait for the peace to fully come together at the end,” Sidney supplements. “You must maintain it on a moment-by-moment basis.”
“Then regardless of how much time we have left,” JP prods, “let’s each reflect as we keep playing one hand at a time. No pity, no judgment. Only listening.”
The men vocalize their agreement and deal another hand.
“I will do this first,” Sidney announces, taking a deep, shaky breath. “To this moment, I feel like the right strategy was held by me to stay content and in control rather than get carried away with desire to pursue chips. It just worries me, perhaps folding each hand might have made the experience less meaningful. Then again, unlike you all, I believe there are infinitely more games ahead of me, so that gives me some comforting.”
The attentive men nod with compassion.
“I’ll get mine over with,” Hayden mumbles, beginning to slur his words. “I’m not a dummy, I knew I wasn’t going to play forever. So I thought, I thought I gotta make myself feel the best I could by having the most fun, and, and getting the most chips. But... I... I don’t know. Maybe there’s somethin’ more to this than chasing good old pleasure.”
Choosing to go next, Derrick laughs uncomfortably. “Man, I wish I didn’t see poker as a game outside of our control. The thing is, I can’t just decide to change what I truly believe in.” He goes quiet for a few seconds. “With that being said, I do wish I more gracefully gave up control to the game and appreciated more of the good stuff that happened.”
“Hmm. Derrick, it could be that the truth is somewhere between our views,” JP ponders. “I might’ve given myself too much credit for my wins and been a little ignorant of how much was out of my hands. At the same time, I’m glad I took responsibility for my moves and played with a strategy I decided for myself.”
The other players smile at the positivity of JP’s self-reflection.
Marcus clears his scratchy throat. “For me, I always found it most important to play poker in a fair, righteous way. I think I followed that well. I also think I played wisely and did a good job fully accepting whatever happened outside of my control. I’ll admit, maybe I was too idealistic. I thought that whatever happened with the cards wasn’t inherently good or bad and simply came down to interpretation.”
Pete smiles. “I guess I’ll give my two cents, too. Honestly, sometimes I ask myself if I helped other players for their good or for my own. At the end of the day, though, I genuinely made a difference, and that gives me more fulfillment than anything else possibly could. The unfortunate part is that I lost every single one of my chips. I might have tried so hard to save everyone else, that I didn’t end up saving myself.”
As Pete concludes, the wind commences an utter onslaught against the building. Fragments of the barricade begin to topple, while the heat crawls its way through gaps in the unhinged door that feebly separates the break room from the beyond. The wall clock, unbothered, continues to tick.
Amid the now spastic flashes of light, JP speaks up. “Alright, you’re up, Niall. Before you go, though...” He begins to pant desperately. “I mean, I think this might be it.”
“It’s OK,” Marcus whispers, patting JP on the back. He manages a half-smile. “This is what happens. Just let go.”
JP nods delicately. “Alright. Go ahead, Niall, and then we’re... well, finished.”
Niall stares into the abyss of his emptied beer bottle. “I want to say that none of this matters,” he croaks, lifting his head slightly to peek at his partners. “And yet, this is all I have ever known to matter.”
Copyright © 2022 by Toni Livakovic
